


Dear Agony

by ThePandoricaWillOpen



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bucky Barnes After Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Deaf Clint Barton, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Minor Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Protective Sam Wilson, Protective Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson Friendship, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-15 22:42:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8075680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePandoricaWillOpen/pseuds/ThePandoricaWillOpen
Summary: "In his dreams, he would see blond hair, and blue eyes looking up at him as if he was the sun and the moon rolled into one. He saw teddy bears and hot dogs and ketchup stains on white shirts and swinging legs dangling off a pier with firecrackers lighting up the sky."The Winter Soldier is captured and held at an SHIELD facility. There he starts to remember blue eyes and blond hair and impossible memories.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this since July 2016. I thought I would start to post it as a way to motivate myself to continue writing it. I also tried to blend some of details from the comics in, which was a bit of a hassle since MCU doesn't strictly match up with the comics.

“You’re not going to break me like this, you know,” he says when the other man enters. He sits up, his back to the cold cement wall, his legs pulled up to his chest and arms around them. “They tried this before. And even they couldn’t get it right, had to torture me in order for it to do any damage.” He chuckles, letting his head tilt back on the wall. “It took them years and a few dozen men to break me, what makes you think you have the balls to break me by yourself?”

The man leans down by the waist and puts the tray the Soldier hadn’t noticed was in his hands on the floor. He really has to stop letting his mind wander, has to start paying attention to the man in front of him covered in shadows and silent as a rock.

He is tall, well built with a small waist and impossibly wide shoulders. From his vantage point on the floor on the far wall, the Soldier can see a shadow of a face but nothing more. He can put no voice to the faceless man who brings him his meals six times a day, supplying him with a large caloric intake that the Soldier knows he needs to maintain optimal capacity.

The intake he never received from Hydra who prefered to keep their weapon on the verge of hunger and feed it through an IV when it became too weak to operate.

So, that eliminated Hydra right off the bat.  

But it still left hundreds of agencies from all around the world who would be interested in the Asset, a mindless weapon without a handler.

If only it could be broken first.

The first few days that he can remember, he’d laid on the floor and waited. No instructions were given from his handlers on how to proceed should the mission fail. And it had failed, spectacularly. Not only had the helicarriers been brought down, destroyed without any hope of retrieving the vital code they needed to recreate it, but he had failed to complete his other mission.

The man in the ridiculous outfit, the one who had foolishly taken his helmet off and thrown his shield into the river, was still alive. The Soldier had pulled him out of the river, his reasons known only to himself, before finding himself surrounded by armed men a few yards away, a woman with bright red hair leading them. They had worked fast, securing him in less time that he would have liked but given his injuries, he was proud to have taken down five men before they managed to sedate him.

He had slept better that ride over to wherever the hell he was then in … a long time. He almost wished they sedated him everyday.

Days, weeks, months passed by in a blur. The Soldier couldn’t keep track of time, he laid on the cot, his vision fuzzy around the edges and his limbs heavy. He remembered fighting, remembered waking up and trying to escape. For a long time there was fighting, yelling and then nothing. He would provoke them, make them sedate him. He didn’t want torture, he didn’t want the damned fucking chair, he wanted blue eyes and kind smiles.

In his dreams, he would see blond hair, and blue eyes looking up at him as if he was the sun and the moon rolled into one. He saw teddy bears and hot dogs and ketchup stains on white shirts and swinging legs dangling off a pier with firecrackers lighting up the sky. He heard a laugh quiet at first, then loud until a wheezing put a stop to it. He felt panic and then relief, blue eyes watering and then blinking the tears away. He saw pink lips, curved into a smirk. Felt bony shoulders push his, felt a thin arm wrap itself around his waist. Smelled sweat and copper, from the nose bleed after riding the Cyclone, the distinct whiff of cologne and booze from the bar they had visited.

Oh, yes, how the Soldier wished he would be sedated and transported into his thoughts were Blue Eyes dominated his every sense.

But now he is stuck, awake, head leaning against a cement wall looking at a man, more shadow than anything else, as his food is set down on the floor. The Soldier eyes it and then shrugs. He has had enough. They no longer come when he trashes the room. No longer rush in, guns pointed in his face, tranquilisers at the ready. They no longer sedate him. They let him fight, scream, destroy.

They let him forget blue eyes and blond hair and pink lips and soft laughter and - and he’s had enough.

“You tell your boss, whoever they are, that I’m not eating anything until I talk with my handler.”

He knows he would get punished for speaking out of turn. He knows it would be a grave punishment to speak at all but he’s been out of cryo freeze for weeks now and was no longer being sedated. The itch in the back of his head, the one that yells and pounds every time he is wiped, is growing.

Without a wipe and freeze, without a total restart, the Soldier is reverting back. Every day, with every intake he ate, he feels the itch grown. Little by little he has been breaking through the Soldier’s walls, pushing himself through gaps within his reinforced mental cage.

The Soldier feels his conditioning crumble, feels his discipline failing him, with each passing day. He needs his handler. He needs instructions, guidance, something.

The man takes a half step forward and seems to think better of it. He lifts a hand to his ear, listening to his com system and nodding once. The Soldier isn’t the only one who takes orders, it seems. The man’s other hand clenches at his side, relaxing a moment later as he turns to leave the room without another look at the Soldier.

When the door closes, he let his legs relax and fall in front of him. His left arm clenches and then relaxes multiple times, a nervous twitch the Soldier had learned he cannot control. He feels anxious, an emotion he hadn’t remembers ever feeling until very recently.

It had come to him during a nightmare, something he has on a nightly basis now that he isn’t drugged or kept awake for days, weeks at a time during a mission. He’d feel the itch, the crack in his walls, before once. A long time ago. Back when his handler had been young and active on the field, a young man with a future to look forward to and not an old man at the end of his career, trying to gain the attention of his superiors, of the Russians, of anyone.

He remembers the panic he felt after completing his assignment and finding his handler missing. Rushing through the streets of New York City, trying to find the man’s blond hair and sharp jawline, without raising suspicions. He remembers being surrounded by men in black gear as he fell to his knees, unable to find his handler and not knowing what to do. His handler would know. His handler knew everything while he, the Soldier, knew nothing.

And now here he is again: alone and without a handler and with men watching him as he falls to pieces in the middle of an unknown place.

The panic, it spreads from his chest, tightening it, to his throat and lungs where it prevents him from taking a steady breath. He gasps for air, unable to take a single breath as the full weight of his words hit home.

What has he done? Shit.

If this was a test, if his handler had put him here for evaluation, he has fucked up by talking to the man who delivers his meals. He has fucked up daring to threaten an agent of whoever was keeping him locked away. He would be punished; perhaps his arm would even be disconnected, torn from him so he could relive his tortured beginnings. He would never be sedated again. He would lose the only thing that was his and not Hydra implanted.

He gasps again, louder, his eyesight tunneling as air failed to reach his brain. He hears the door open just as he begins to blackout. In that instant before he passes out, he could have sworn he saw pink lips calling out for a name he hadn’t heard since the helicarrier.

Who the hell is Bucky?

* * *

He wakes up on a cot with the familiar feel of an IV drip in his arm and an ache in his chest. He tries to sit up, but his left arm was useless at his side. He briefly wonders how much time they had to tamper with the mechanics of it. Did they reconfigure it? Shut it down? Reprogrammed it so he can’t use it? How long has he been out for? Turning his head to the side and following the IV to the clear bag attached on a pole, he chuckles to himself. They left him several things to make a weapon out of. Whoever these people are, they are not all smart.

Before he can make a move to remove the IV and secure a weapon, something moves in the shadows. It was the man, the one who brought him his meals. The shadows of his shoulders, not squared and pulled back in a military pose are hunched forward, hands in his front pockets. The man takes a step out of the shadows, not fully out of the light but enough that the Soldier can see his face and the blue of his eyes. They were startlingly familiar, almost like -

It’s been who knows how long since he’s heard a voice other than his own which is why when the man spoke, the Soldier’s heart skips a beat.

“Are you okay?”

It is just his imagination. There is no way this man could sound like the voice in his dreams and nightmares. There is no way. He pushes his legs over the cot, closing his eyes as the room spins. His left arm pulls at his shoulder, making him lean to the side to compensate for the dead weight. The man steps forward, shadows retreating enough so that the Soldier can see a sharp jawline covered with light stubble.

“How are you feeling?”

“What is wrong with my arm?” He demands, ignoring his accelerated heartbeat. He will not show weakness. He is not weak. “It is malfunctioning.”

“That… we didn’t do that,” the man says. He licks his bottom lip, worrying it between his teeth for a moment. “I - we would never hurt you.”

The Soldier scoffs. He’s heard that before dozens of times throughout his “enlistment”. Lies meant to reassure and gain the trust of the would-be victim. Well, he is no victim. He has told the lies during hundreds of interrogations he knows all the tactics. After all, he is the greatest assassin the twentieth century has ever known. These people, whatever faction or government they belonged to has no idea what he is capable of.

“My demand still holds. I demand to see my handler.” Wide shoulders square, the man’s jawline clenching and his hands fisting at his side. He takes a step forward, the light dangling from the ceiling revealing the rest of his body but keeping most of his face under shadows. The Soldier squints, trying to make heads or tails of the man’s face. Nothing but darkness. He chuckles again and says, “You’re not going to break me. No matter how much you sound like - ”

“Like who?”

The Soldier ignores him, licking the bottom of his lip and watching curiously as the man’s hand slacken at his side. Odd. Requiring more research to complete assessment.

A breathless whisper of: “Who, Bu - Who do I sound like?”

“No one!” the Soldier snaps. He has to stop talking, stop the itch in his brain from coming out. The Soldier is meant to destroy, not talk. He is meant to take orders, not converse with the enemy. He looks up, trying to meet the man’s eye and says, “You won’t succeed.”

“I don’t want to break you. That’s not why we are doing this.”

The Soldier stands, thighs clenching as he tries to maintain the upright position. He takes a step towards the man, his arm pulling on the IV still connected. The man makes an aborted gesture with his hands as if he wants to reach out and help. But he doesn’t come any closer, he maintains his distance and for that, the Soldier is grateful. The IV pulls at his right arm while his left just hangs off his body, nonfunctioning.

It has been a long time since he’s felt so useless, so incomplete. Perhaps he’s become soft under the care of his last handler. Maybe that’s why he was left alone, without a mission, before being scooped up by whoever these people were. Whoever this man who stood in front of him is.

They maintain eye contact - or at least the Soldier assumed they did - for another minute. It is only broken when the man turns away, giving the Soldier his back for a foolish second. He is not in any condition to take the man out, the IV must have contained some sort of sedative that works slowly through his advanced system, or else the man would be incapacitated for his mistake. Never turn your back on your enemy, he had learned that the hard way.

He watches as the man puts one hand on his hip and the other on his forehead, looking up at the ceiling. The action leaves the Soldier blinking, a memory itching its way behind his eyelids.

The familiar voice and blond hair flashed through his mind, his mouth moving but the sounds not matching. His memory is patchy, trying to fix the correct audio to the memory. The Soldier allows himself a deep breath and closes his eyes as the memory comes back to him.

 

_“C’mon, Stevie! I’ll be fun, I promise!”_

_“Fun for who? Not me and not the dame you roped into going with me.”_

_“Don’t say that. She’d gonna love you, I promise.”_

_“I don’t know about this, Buck. Why couldn’t we just -”_

_“What? Why couldn’t we just what, Steve?”_

_“Nothing. Never mind. Let’s go or we gonna be late.”_

_“Steve…”_

His eyes snap open as he detects movement from the man. He’s turned back around, his chest heaving as if he is struggling to breath. The Soldier himself is overtaken by a pain in his chest that he can not identify. He takes a deep breath, composing himself before the man can figure out his weakness and exploit it. He will not be exploited. Not any more.

He flinches, expecting a blow, when the man raises his arm. The arm stills half way, the man hiding behind shadows pausing at the Soldier’s flinch. The Soldier waited.

“I -” the man begins, tapping his ear where the Soldier a finger on his comm device. Of course they are watching and listening, he would have to walk the room later to find bugs and cameras. “I can’t do this.”

The man brings his other hand to his face, rubbing both of his palms against his eyes so hard the Soldier thinks he might hurt himself. His breathing is labored, the sounds of it vibrating across the small room and making the Soldier blink as another memory starts to unfold.

But then the noise stops and the man turns away, reaching for the door handle. At the last moment he turns back and whispers, “I’m sorry.”

The Soldier stand there for another minute and then, the sedative finally having spread to the rest of his body, collapses on the cold cement floor, his metal arm pulling his body down to the left and just narrowly avoiding hitting his head. The last thing he recalls is a frail shaking hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat, and a wheezing noise slowly returning to normal breath.

* * *

The man doesn’t return for over twenty-four feedings. Another man, slightly shorter, with dark skin, takes over. At first, the man is cautious, keeping his eye on the Soldier as he bends down to put the tray of food on the floor. He chuckles, watching the slow careful movements, allowing a smirk to graze his features. The man, dark eyes narrowed, crosses his arms as he straightens up before leaving.

Once alone, the Soldier closes his eyes and waits. Twenty-four feedings, if his calculations are correct that would be around four days. This new man wore the same variation of clothing at every feeding, jeans and a black shirt. He couldn't tell if the days are passing or not, unlike with the other man. He would change his shirts. Sometimes they would be a light blue shade making his eyes appear green in the poor light. Sometimes they would be brown, the Soldier liked it when the man wore brown, it reminds him of... he wasn't sure what. It is as if the color, matched with blue eyes, brings a sense of belonging to him, which he has lacked for a long time.

He shakes his head and leans back on the cot they had let him keep. He turns, eyeing the food on the floor. His demands had not been met. He didn't get to make demands from his last handlers; he took orders and was punished when he stepped out of line for the smallest of things. Even a flicker in the wrong direction could lead him back on the chair.

But these people, whoever they were, didn't seem to care. It was a mistake to be this complacent. He would teach them that when the time came.

* * *

On the twenty-fifth feeding, the man returns and replaces the uneaten tray with another. He doesn’t stand from his crouched position, however, drawing the attention of the Soldier.

"Look, you gotta eat something or else your gonna get sick." The Soldier sits up on the bed, his back to the wall, one leg pulled up to his chest while the other dangles over the edge of the bed. He raises an eyebrow and waits, baiting the man to continue. The more he can get out of him, the more information he can extract. "My name is Sam, okay. I'm not supposed to have told you that but screw it. I need you to trust me when I tell you that starving yourself is not doing anyone any good, especially not if you wanna get your arm to work again. You might be some super soldier but you still gotta eat to survive."

The man - Sam - rights himself. From his slight accent, the Soldier could tell the man was from New York, perhaps Harlem or thereabouts. And there is a hint of a military pose when he stands up, his arms coming to his side in fist with thumb outwards. His short-cropped hair only reaffirms that. It doesn’t help the Soldier pinpoint his location or narrow down what agency or faction could be holding him but it was something to start with. Clearly American. He stops himself from shivering. The Americans are worse than the Russians.

He contemplates Sam and then gestures to the light bulb hanging off the ceiling. Sam looks up, pursing his lips in thought. "Yeah, okay. If I get you a better light, something to light up the whole room, and maybe a table and a chair, will you eat something?"

The Soldier tilts his head, lacing his fingers over his knee. Before he can stop himself he asks, "Where is the other man?"

"Ste- the other man had to take care of something."

"Light, chair, table and the man," he says firmly. "Then, I eat."

Sam seems taken aback but nods anyways.

* * *

The Soldier can’t be sure but there is a part of him that wants to see the face that went with the blue eyes.

Before he had started to talk, when feedings consisted of being chained to the wall and having the tray pushed towards him like some animal, there had been a point where the Soldier considered the man too kind.

With Hydra, ever so dramatic in both real life and history, there would be no chains only violence. He would not have been able to move an inch not when their chains were made specifically to hold him back. There would be pain, sharp and radiating from baton hits and rifle butts coming from the soldiers who would surround him even if when he was too tired to even open his eyes. His life had been nothing but violence, breeding a hate within him that fueled his missions, made him want to be the best. Violence that made him crave it, even need it.

He is growing soft now. Twenty-six feedings since he started counting and he would still flinch at the sound of the door opening. Twenty-six feedings, possibly four days since he started to keep track, and he is still expecting to be beaten to an inch of his miserable life whenever the door opens. He will never be able to leave those memories behind and, frankly, these events weren't exactly better.

The chains are gone and so is the violence but he is still being kept locked up like a feral animal only to be let out when a fight needs to be fought.

Twenty-six feedings and he doesn’t feel any better than he did when he first started counting.

Twenty-six feedings and he is still just a man in a cell with only a cot and a dangling light hanging off a high ceiling.

* * *

Feeding twenty-seven brings a table and a chair along with the tray of food. The tray contains utensils, a new addition to the routine. The Soldier watches as Sam opens the door, two armed guards with weapons drawn behind him barring no insignias or colors, and pushes a metal table and chair into the cemented cell. Oh, how easily the Soldier could overpower them. He could be by the door in seconds, snapping Sam's neck, throwing the chair aside and using the table as cover as the men opened fire. Once they stopped shooting, resetting their clips or retreating, he would push aside the table and -

"I got you that table and chair I promised," Sam says snapping the Soldier out of his thoughts. He sits up on the bed, adapting the same posture from earlier, and swings his leg back and forth, waiting. Sam sighs and adds, "the other two things are gonna be a bit more complicated. The man - the other guy before me - is still working through some stuff so he isn't available right now and the light bulb is - well, Ima tell you the truth. No technician is gonna wanna come in here without peeing their pants at seeing you. You're a scary dude, okay? But I'm working on it." He pushes the table and chair between them, the muscles in his arms bulging slightly. The Soldier raises an eyebrow that had Sam smack his lips. "You know what? This is heavy, so it's all you to put it wherever you wanna. You're foods ready. Eat something."

After Sam leaves, the Soldier pushes himself off the bed and walks to the table. With his left hand, only slightly more operational than after he had blacked out, he tries to move the table to the center of the room. He isn’t going to hide what the table was - an interrogation table.

It might have seemed like an act of kindness from Sam, but the Soldier can see past that and to what it really is. He is talking more, interacting with his jailers, even making demands from them. Soon, he would be able to talk to whoever gave Sam and the other man orders. Soon, he would be ready to be either interrogated or leashed.

He isn’t sure which he prefers at this point.

He pulls the chair around and sits, reaching for the tray with his flesh arm. He grabs the spoon and begins to eat only vaguely noting that the food tastes odd. It had been a while since he had eaten, having gotten used to regular feedings before making demands.

Belatedly, he recognized the taste. He blinks as his vision becomes cloudy and his thoughts muddled. He has been drugged. Sam has drugged his food. The Soldier, master assassin had been drugged by a man who wore the same thing everyday. The last thing he feels is pain as he slumps forward, head hitting the metal tray and spilling his food.

* * *

When he comes to, the light in the cell is blinding. He lays face up on the cot, right arm dangling off the side, fingertips touching the floor. His left arm feels lighter at his side. He makes a fist and is surprised when the metal fingers comply. He has a working metal arm again. Suppressing a chill at the thought that some scientist, some engineer, came into the cell and tampered with his arm, he pushes himself up on the cot. The metal creaked slightly under him, the cot moving according to his movements.

He blinks away any traces of the drugs, rubbing his flesh hand through his hair. The light above him was fixed, illuminating the rest of the cement cell he is being held in. The table and chair remain, a single tray of food sits on top of it.

At least they hadn’t punished him, Hydra would have punished him for demanding such privileges. He shakes his head. No, he has to stop thinking that way. These people are different, obviously, and he has to adapt in order to exploit their weaknesses.

The blue eyed man is a weakness, that much the Soldier is sure about. The way he cowered and ran out of the room for seemingly no reason whatsoever, the way he tapped at his comm link as if ignoring what he was being told, that was a weakness the Soldier could explore.

He stands up and does a cursory check of the room, looking for cameras and other surveillance devices. He finds none but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. This was their facility after all. Listening devices could be embedded in the walls, a camera could be hiding in the new light they installed, hell, he could have a bug in his arm.

He checks his cot to make sure. Nothing. He sits down on it, laying back and throwing his arm over his eyes. He is exhausted. The drugs are still working out of his system and he isn’t helping things much by standing up. He takes a deep breath and hopes for dreams.

* * *

_There is wheezing. A wet sound. A rattling in his ears. A door opens. Hello’s being shouted and answered. Doors closing, slamming, reopening._

_He sits up, a hand rubbing a curved back. A pale hand over his own heart. More wheezing. More wet sounds. The bed creaks, shoes scuffle against the floor. Whispers, words said into red ears and even redder cheeks._

_“It’s okay, Stevie. Just breathe.” His heart beating in his chest. THUMP THUMP. THUMP THUMP. Speeding up until it was all he could hear. Hot tears running down his face. Gasping noises. He pulls the blond head under his chin and whispers, “Please don’t leave me.”_

* * *

He is lying on the cot when the door opens. Out of the corner of his eye he sees a man enter. Light skin, dark blond hair. Dark cargo pants tucked into dark boots. Brown shirt, tight around the shoulders but loose around the hips. The Soldier turns his head and immediately pushed himself up and stood. Blue eyes meet his for a second before they look down at the floor. They take the Soldier’s breath away. He does not like that feeling.

The Soldier sees something in them, a flicker of emotion he can’t yet interpret. But he will. He has to play his cards right in order to - to -

“I was told you - you, um, asked about me,” the man says, closing the door firmly behind him and leaning back against it. “I’m - I’m not sure why you would do that. But, but I’m here so…”

The Soldier takes a step forward walking until he stands behind the metal table. He pulls the chair and sits, waiting. His heart is beating rapidly in his chest as he says, “you were gone for 4.6 days.”

The man chuckles, his eyes rising from the floor. “You… you kept track of that?”

The Soldier nods. When the man smiles looking like a proud parent, the he feels his stomach drop. He blinks rapidly, concentrating on finding the man’s weakness, ignoring the feeling in his chest. There is to be no warmth - only winter.

“That’s impressive.” A pause where the two men look at one another. The Soldier cannot read the expression the other man has on his face, it confuses him. He doesn’t like feeling confusion. The man taps his ear with his left hand and says, “I need another chair in here.”

There was a few minutes before a knock on the door makes the man push himself off and open it. A chair is passed to him with a quiet, “Here you are, Captain. Do you require anything else, sir?”

“No, thank you.” The man - no, the Captain - takes the chair and closes the door. The Soldier remains in his seat, head tilted to the side as he watches the exchange and waits. The Captain brings the chair over to the table and sits down in front of him. He points behind him and smirks. “I gave you two chances of escape and yet here you are.”

The Soldier keeps his face neutral, suppressing a smile. “You are very interesting, Captain.”

“That’s not my name,” he says with a sad smile. “How about giving me a name to call you and I’ll give you my name.”

“I am …” he stops. The Captain bites his lower lip, watching as the Soldier squirms under his gaze. His conditioning, the programming that makes up his mind, is crumbling slowly around him. He needs the chair, he needs a handler. If this, this interrogation will get him that, then the Soldier needs a name. Looking into the man’s eyes, surveying his face, his dark blond hair reflecting bits of brown in it, he says the name he’s been hearing in his dreams ever since he woke up in this jail. “My name is Steve.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and the Asset talk. Natasha calls Steve out and Sam brings in a new perspective.

“ **Oh, shit,** ” Sam's voice says through the comm in Steve's ear. “ **That’s… well, that’s an interesting twist.** ”

Steve takes a deep breath and keeps looking at Bucky. He wants to correct him, to reach out for him and make him understand, make him remember who he really is. But he can’t do that. All Steve can do is keep his hands on the table, palms flat on the metal surface, and maintain a blank face. Bucky, or whatever he chooses to call himself, remembers him. That’s all that matters. Why else would he give Steve's name as his own? Steve wonders what else Bucky remembers. A small bundle of hope shines brighter than it has in months.

" **He remembers something** ," Sam agrees through the comm. **"It won't be easy but he should start to remember more the more you talk to him. He's had several nightmares at night since you've been gone. Talk to him and see what he is willing to share."**

Steve nods, looking at one of the cameras on the left side of the wall embedded into the cement walls. He knows he's just told Bucky where it is and wonders how long it will take for it to be torn out of the wall.

Bucky's hands are on the table, it would be so easy to slide his own and touch his fingertips to make sure he was really sitting there, looking at him with intense eyes. But he belays that action. He’s been doing that a lot lately, holding back, it burns him inside every time.

They had always been tactile. Bucky’s arm around, Steve’s around his waist, their bodies pulled in closer than was appropriate for the times. They used to get looks, Steve used to feel eyes on him from strangers looking at them too close. But the only eyes that ever mattered where the steel-blue ones looking down at him with nothing but love in them.

"This isn't an interrogation," Steve says, looking down at his hands. "I just wanted to talk with you, if that’s okay?” Nothing. Just an unblinking stare. "Okay." Steve takes a deep breath. "Do you have any questions for me?"

“Your name,” he says immediately.

“Right!” Steve chuckles softly. “Forgot. Yes. You can call me Rogers.”

“Why did you leave, Rogers?” Bucky asks without missing a beat.

“I had things to take care of.”

Bucky scoffs, his face going from blank to amused and then back to blank. Steve blinks as he watches the quick change. It’s like he’s watching parts of Bucky slipping through the cool persona that sits in front of him. “That’s what the other man said.”

“He was right,” Steve says slowly, not taking his eyes off Bucky.

Bucky stares at Steve for a long moment, his eyes moving across his face like he’s searching for an something that only Steve's face can answer. His eyes look down briefly and then meets Steve's eyes and says, “You aren’t as good of a liar as he is.”

“What?" Steve blinks. "What makes you think I’m lying?”

“You widen your eyes, and scrunch up your eyebrows.”

“How’d you know that when we haven’t spoken at length before?”

“I - I don’t know.” Bucky pauses, tilting his head to the side. “Am I wrong?”

Steve shakes his head. “No.” He licks his lower lip, Bucky’s eyes follow his movements as he sits back on the table trying to not to look too tense over what just happened. So Bucky does remember him, details of him… something. “You’re right. I lied to you. I’ll make you a deal. For every question I answer, you answer one too.”

“Quid-pro-quo.” Bucky nodded one. “It is your turn.”

“Yeah,” Steve pauses and thinks. “Before, you mentioned I sounded like someone you knew. Can you remember who?”

“I don’t know.” Bucky’s left hand twitches, the metal of his hand meeting the metal of the table.

Steve smiles. “You aren’t a good liar yourself, there, pal.” He looks to Bucky’s hand and arches his eyebrow. “I know your tell too. You tapped your fingers when you lie.”

“How do you know if we haven’t spoken at length before?” Bucky parrots back.

Steve ignores him. “Last time I saw you, your arm didn’t work.”

“The other man drugged me. Woke up with fixed arm.” Bucky shrugs. “How long have I been in here?”

“Don't you have a system? You said I was gone for 4.6 days.”

“Only started counting once you-” He stops.

When it looked like he wasn't going continue, Steve answers, “almost six months now. My turn. What is the last thing you remember before you woke up here?”

“You. What is your real name?”

Steve's heart is beating in his chest, threatening to overpower his chest and push its way out of his body. He’s suspected but hearing it come out of his mouth - it hits him hard.

“ **Deep breaths,** ” Sam says in his ear. “ **I need you to take a deep calming-** ”

Steve pulls the comm out of his ear and leans forward on his elbows. Bucky leans back, pulling his hands away and to his lap. The pain in his chest spreads further inside Steve’s body.

“What do you mean me?” Bucky stares at him, eyes and face blank. Steve closes his eyes, takes a calming breath and then opens them again. “They call me Captain America. Please answer my question.”

“You were my mission. I remember Project Insight. Falling. Failing my mission. Guards everywhere. Fighting. Coughing behind me.”

“You dragged me out of the river, why?”

“It is my turn to ask.”

“Then ask.” This is it, he thinks, his heart going into overdrive. His hands are shaking; he feels more adrenaline rush through his body than any other time in his life. “Ask me.”

“Who is-” His eyes flicker behind Steve when the door opens.

Steve almost growls at the interruption, his hands fisting in order to keep himself from sprinting from his seat and forcefully closing the door. He was close, so fucking close!

He keeps his eyes on Bucky, unwilling to let him out of sight longer than necessary, unwilling to let their moment dwindle down and die like a campfire. But his eyes have gone back to their blankness, looking back at Steve with stranger’s eyes. They look at him as if he was just someone passing by on the street, an unknown face never to be seen again.

“Captain Rogers, may I speak to you for a moment?” Sam asks calmly from behind him.

“I’m in the middle of something,” Steve says through clenched teeth. “Can’t it wait?”

“It really can’t,” Sam says. “It’s important, Captain.”

“Okay, fine!” Steve snaps. He looks at Bucky offering a small smile. Bucky continues to stare at him and Steve feels like he is looking right through him. It makes the adrenaline dry up, his heart stop. “Just … gimme a moment okay?” One small nod is all he gets. Steve gets up, pushing his chair back and wincing when it scrapes the floor. He turns to Bucky and asks, “You want anything while I’m out there? Coffee maybe? Some food?”

“You would trust me with a hot liquid?” Bucky asks, a quirk to his lips.

“Only if you trust that I won’t drug it,” Steve says. “So coffee?”

A curt nod.

“Great. I’ll be right back, okay?”

He isn’t sure whom he was asking exactly. Bucky has had plenty of chances to get out, Sam holding the door open waiting for Steve being one of many presented just in the last hour, and yet he sits there and waits. Steve hoped - god, did he hope - that it wasn’t all part of an escape plan that was forming in Bucky’s head. Earning trust and getting as much information as possible in order to escape one day, he is, after all, an assassin trained to get in, kill and get out without being seen or caught.

With one last look at Bucky, Steve follows Sam out. He sighs when Sam closes the door behind him and crosses his arms. Steve clenches his jaw and waits.

When Sam doesn’t say anything, Steve makes to go back into the room.

“Aren’t ya gonna get him that coffee?” Sam asks, blocking his way inside. “Cuz it’s that way.”

“What do you want, Sam?”

“Let’s get that coffee before he gets antsy and knocks out that camera,” Sam says.

He walks away with Steve trailing behind him. A few doors down the badly lit hallway and they enter the makeshift kitchen that Sam spends hours in making everyone a home cooked meal. Sam was good that way, he refused to let anyone, especially Steve, go hungry. Without Sam, Steve doubted he’d survive this long; if it was up to Steve, he would spend every waking minute watching over Bucky.

It was Sam who suggested they bring in Natasha and Clint to help out. It was Sam who made a schedule, suggesting a routine would help Bucky keep track of time even in the sunless cell. It was Sam who cooked Bucky’s meals, who contacted doctors who specialized in patients with memory problems. The one who had suggested they try something other than familiar foods to get Bucky to come out.

It was Sam who maintained a steady head while Steve floundered around like a fish with it’s head cut off. Steve still isn’t sure how he got so lucky to have met Sam but he was sure he couldn’t have done this on his own.

Sam goes straight to the coffee machine and pours himself a cup of coffee. He takes a sip and then looks at Steve and says, “Dude, seriously, what the hell? We agreed you would wear a comm link.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” Steve answers. “You heard him! He remembers me.”

“No, he remembers kicking your ass and almost killin’ you,” Sam corrects. “So, unless I missed something, he remembers you being his target and nothing more.”

“He remembers my voice, he said that too.”

“You talked to him when you were fighting,” Sam argues. “Look, I don’t wanna rain on your Bucky parade but someone’s gotta do it. That guy in there is not your best friend; he’s not your buddy. At least not yet. You can’t have high hopes when talkin’ to him. You gotta remember that he doesn’t know who Bucky is, he doesn’t know what he’s been through at the hands of those bastards. His memory is so muddled that he might not even remember anything but the structure and programming that they engrained in him.” Sam sighs, putting the cup of coffee down on the counter behind him and facing Steve. “It’s gonna take more than-”

“- I know, okay, I know,” Steve interrupts. He walks over to the counter where Sam is and leans on it next to Sam, their shoulders touching. He rubs his face and whispers, “but I’ll do anything to get him back.”

“That’s kinda my point, Steve.” Sam pushes away from the counter and opens a cupboard. He gets out a tray and sets it next to Steve. “You know how he takes his coffee?”

“Black with sugar, when we could afford it.”

“Let’s see how he takes it now, yeah?” Sam says as he fills two cups of coffee and then another cup one with creamer. He put a few packets of sugar on the side. “Just don’t expect too much from him, okay? You have to take it slow, you can’t force him to remember. It won’t do either of you any good.”

“I just want him to get better,” Steve replies softly. “That’s it.”

“Yeah, but what if his better isn’t the better you’re hoping for?”

Steve takes the tray from Sam, carefully balancing it even when his hands are anything but steady.

“I can handle it,” Steve answers. “I’m a big boy.”

“I know Captain America can handle it. It’s the skinny kid from Brooklyn that I’m worried about,” Sam calls out, making Steve stop just as he reached the door.

No, the skinny kid from Brooklyn who had grand ideas about going off to war simply because it was the right thing to do, that kid could not handle it. But Steve, Steve wasn’t that kid anymore just like Bucky wasn’t the same Bucky that went off to war all those years ago.

Steve knows that, even if sometimes while he watches Bucky through the surveillance feed, it feels like he knows nothing about anything.

Even if he doesn’t get his Bucky back, he wants whatever variation of Bucky that his body contained to be safe from Hydra and anyone else who might come after him. Even if it meant losing Bucky in order to safeguard him, if he never got to see Bucky ever again, Steve would do it as long as Bucky is alive, safe and happy.

So, no, he can’t handle it.

But he would.

For Bucky.

* * *

Bucky’s face takes on a weird look when Steve walks in. His eyes widening for a fraction of a second, before he returns his face to blank. Steve hates that blank stare, the way his eyes manage to convey so much emotion before going completely empty.

“Hey,” Steve greets as he closes the door with the heel of his boot, tray balancing in his arms. “I got that coffee you wanted.”

“You offered,” Bucky corrects, straightening up in his seat.

“Yeah, I did, didn’t I?” Steve offers a small smile, setting the tray on the table and sitting down. He hands one of the cups to Bucky. “I don’t know how you take your coffee, so I got you some creamer and sugar.”

Bucky blinks, looking between Steve and the coffee cup and then to the creamer and sugars. He looks confused and lost and utterly terrified at the same time.

“ **Too many choice,** ” Sam’s voice supplies. “ **He’s not used to having options. Tell him what to do for now, we’ll ease him into making his own choices later**.”

“Try it,” Steve offers, letting a little bit of what Clint calls his ‘Cap command voice’ into his tone. He pushes the cup closer to Bucky’s hand on the table. “I like mine black but you might not-”

Bucky grabs the cup, raising it to his lips. For a second Steve thinks he’s going to drink the hot coffee too fast but Bucky merely opens his lips and takes a sip. He grimaces, putting the cup back on the table and looking at Steve. “Bitter,” he says.

Steve suppresses a smile, pointing to the sugar packets on the tray. “Let me add some sugar, okay?” He reaches out for the cup and two packets of sugar in it. He shakes the cup a bit, trying to get the sugar to mix with the coffee without a stirrer. “Try it now.”

“Yes,” Bucky says after taking a sip. He cradles the cup between both his hands, his metal fingers tracing the lid. Steve smiles fondly. He remembers Bucky tracing the rims of cups absently when they sat around the apartment and talked with his mother. He remembers the way his eyes would crinkle when she brought over enough food to feed them for a month even though she had four mouths to feed at home.

“You were about to ask me a question,” Steve supplies after a moment, taking himself out of his memories. “What was it?”

He shakes his head. “I don't want to ask it anymore.”

“Okay, do you wanna ask another?”

“You are asking me many questions,” he points out.

“We can stop if you want.”

Bucky shakes his head again, eyes on the coffee. “You trust too easily.”

In his ear Sam scoffs, " **d** **on't I know it!”**

Steve rolls his eyes and says, “so I've been told.”

“You were right, before. I could escape in any number of ways.” He points to the room around them. “Eight ways are obvious right away.”

“Then why don't you?”

Bucky doesn't say anything for a long time. His finger continues to thumb the rim of the cup. Steve takes a sip of his cup and Bucky follows, their eyes meeting across the table. When he puts his cup down, Bucky mirrors him.

“Your eyes,” Bucky finally answers, his eyes on Steve waiting for a reaction. He gets one if the slight pull of the corner of his lips is any indication. “I wish to ask one question.”

“What is it?”

“Will you return?”

Steve breaks eyes contact, looking down at the black coffee as if it held the answer to the question. “Do - do you want me to come back?” He looks up and meets Bucky’s eyes, hope blossoming in his chest. If Bucky wants him to come back then hell, yeah, he would come back every day until … until Bucky decided he didn’t want to see his old mug ever again.

It takes a long moment before Bucky head moves, almost as if he’s afraid of answering incorrectly. Just a tiny nod, barely there, if Steve had blinked in that exact moment he might have missed it. But he doesn’t miss it. He sees it and he smiles wide for the first time in a long time. “Okay, I’ll come back. Now finish your coffee.”

They don’t talk much while they sip their coffee. Sometimes Steve will ask him something and Bucky will take a moment before replying. Other times Bucky will point things out, like how the dangling light bulb annoys him or how easy it would be use it as a weapon in order to escape. He comments on the food, Sam gasping loudly in Steve’s ear, and Steve smiles remembering how picky Bucky was about what he ate.

Little things that mean nothing and everything.

Eventually the cups are empty and Sam tells him the time through the comm in his ear. He gets up, collects their cups and, with extreme effort, tells Bucky he will see him tomorrow. Bucky blinks, looking away from Steve for the first time in the last few minutes. Steve immediately misses the contact and internally kicks himself for allowing himself to get attached so quickly.

* * *

“So… were you two together during the war?” Natasha asks, startling him when he leaves the room. She leans against the doorframe, her long legs crossed at the ankles, her hands stuffed into her back pockets.

“Don’t,” Steve warns, walking past her, “don’t go there, Natasha.”

“Why not, Steve?” She follows behind him, not quite catching up to his long strides. “It’s obvious you’re letting your feelings for him get in the way of whatever this is.”

“All we did was talk. I got him to talk.”

“Yeah, for three hours. And what have you learned? Huh? That he doesn’t like being in a cell? That he hates the bulb dangling from the ceiling? That he has eight escape plans currently running through his head? Oh, yeah, and that he doesn’t like Sam's gravy.”

“He’s talking,” Steve tries again. “That’s what counts. It’s only the first day. I want to ease into it.” He sighs. “Look, I’m not a spy. I wasn’t trained for interrogations, I’m a soldier.”

“No, you’re Captain America,” Natasha says firmly. “And you have an ex-Hydra assassin -”

“- He’s not -”

“- He is whether he knows it or not and he could know the location of safe houses, of bases that we can only speculate about. Hydra is good at covering their tracks; they don’t want to be found, not when one of their heads has been cut off. And you’re treating him like he’s a child, walking around eggshells when we could be out blowing up Hydra bases.”

“He’s not just some guy, Nat,” Steve says looking down at his shoes. “He’s Bucky.”

“That doesn’t mean as much to me as it does to you, sorry.” She sighs and shakes her head. “I’m right, aren’t I? You love him, don’t you?”

“Just… don’t, okay?” She levels him a look, one perfect eyebrow raised, waiting for the answer so Steve does what he’s always done when faced with the question. He lies. “I love like a brother. Nothing more.”

“He’s right,” she replies back with a shake of her head. “It’s your eyes that give it away.” She walks away just as Sam leaves the kitchen. She waves at him in passing and says, loud enough for Steve to hear, “He’s all yours, denial and suppressed emotions and all.”

“And where are you going?” Sam asks.

“Clint’s sister is having a baby shower,” she says over her shoulder. “We’re gonna go see her at her farm. Let out some steam, maybe blow up some stuff. See ya.”

Sam just shakes his head as he walks towards Steve. “How’d it go?”

“He doesn’t like your gravy,” Steve reminds him with a smile.

“I know! How dare he not like my gravy? My grandma taught me how to make that gravy!”

“Don’t take it personally. Bucky’s never liked anything on his mash potatoes. He useta say that foods shouldn’t touch until they reached your stomach.”

“What a heathen,” Sam whispers, passing by Steve on his way back to the surveillance room.

“Do you mind if I hang around for a while?” I don’t want to leave him yet, is left unsaid. Sam stops walking, his brown eyes assessing him. He nods and Steve catches up to him before they head to the office and take their seats.

Bucky is still sitting on the metal chair, his hands gripping the table just like Steve had left him. His arms were strained and Steve wouldn’t be surprised to find finger indentations in the metal tomorrow. From the view of the camera, over his left shoulder, Steve can see the tension that he holds in his body. He had noticed it during their talk, of course, but from this angle he can see the way his back muscles strain against his leather gear. Towards the end he had relaxed a bit but the tension was back now.

Steve wonders what is going through his mind at this very moment that had every muscle in his body tensed in that way.

He should get him some clothes, now that he seemed more willing to talk. Maybe he could get permission to get him out of the cell so he could shower instead of having to sedate him when he gets too rank. He isn’t an animal and yet, for the past six months, that’s how they had been treating him.

It had never felt right to keep him locked up in the first place but to sedate him whenever they needed to take blood tests and make sure he hadn't hurt himself too much after trying to punch the cement wall, well, that was just wrong. They never did it when Steve was around, he always figured it happened whenever Fury called him into his office for a debrief. They probably thought he would freak out if he saw them bathing and doing other things to Bucky’s body without his consent.

And they would be right.

If there was one thing that Bucky deserved more than anything in the world it was to have the right to say what happened to his body. Being sedated and bathed by strangers was not okay in Steve’s books. It should not be okay in anyone’s books but S.H.I.E.L.D didn’t care about the “little things” as Fury had told him when Steve confronted him about it. After that they were a bit more discreet with when and how they did it.

The first thing Steve would do tomorrow was asking Bucky if he wanted a shower and some clean clothes. Protocols and Fury be damned.

“She’s right, isn’t she?” Sam asks snapping Steve out of his thoughts.

“I’m getting a little tired of people asking me that question.”

“Look, I won’t judge you whichever way you answer, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“It feels…” He stops, trying to find a word that could describe all the indescribable emotions he felt having Bucky so close and yet so far. He settled for, “wrong.”

“Wrong? Loving another guy isn’t -”

“No! That’s not what I-” He leans back on the chair and sighs. “I meant that it feels wrong to talk about him while he’s in there.” Steve shakes his head and looks at Bucky through the security feed. He’s pacing, murmuring to himself in Russian now. Steve suddenly wishes Natasha had stayed so she could translate. “That’s not the Bucky I grew up with, went to war with. The Bucky I died for, mourned for.”

“If I remember my history correctly, you aren’t exactly the Steve he grew up with either.”

“That’s different,” Steve counters. “I volunteered for this, for the serum. He - he didn’t. He didn’t have a choice in the matter.”

“Well, whether you love him like a brother or something else, it doesn’t matter,” Sam says point blank. “Just hear me out, okay? He doesn’t remember you apart from a few snippets of displaced memories, events that make no sense to him, that he feels nothing about. But you, you have your memories and you can’t let them color the way you act around him.”

“What do the doctors call it? Projecting my emotions?”

“Something like that, sure. What I’m saying is, you can’t let the fact that you have feelings for him distract you from your mission.”

“Mission?”

“Mission: Save Bucky From Himself. When he starts to remember more, the more you talk to him, the more he’ll want to pull away. I don’t want to see you get your hopes up and get hurt.”

“So you’ve said before.”

They stay quiet for a while, watching Bucky finally stop pacing and sit back on his cot. Steve wonders if it’s as uncomfortable to sleep in as his bed is and he gets his answer a second later when Bucky gets up and lays on the floor instead. Too soft, Steve thinks, even with the wires poking at your back, it’s still too soft.

Steve turns to Sam once Bucky’s looks like he isn’t going to get up any time soon. He’s been a dick to Sam and Natasha lately, too worried about his old best friend to care about hurting his new friends. They were doing so much for him, giving up their days to watch over an amnesiac 90-year-old vet who could probably kill them with his pinky. He runs his hand through his hair and nods.

“She’s right,” he whispers. It takes a few seconds for Sam to understand what he means and when it does, his face scrunches up with worry. “It’s not a big deal. I’ve been keeping this secret for - for a long time and seeing him again isn’t going to make me spill the beans so there’s really nothing to worry about.”

“For how long, exactly?”

“Since I was sixteen,” Steve answers. He chews on his lower lip for a second and then adds, “It wasn’t safe for him to know then and it’s not safe for him to know now. Hell, it feels like it will never be safe for me to tell him.”

Sam reaches out and lays a hand on Steve’s thigh, squeezing it. “It will be. Once he gets to a better place, you can tell him.”

“That’s just it, Sam. What if he doesn’t get better?”

“He will,” Sam assures him.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because he’s got me,” he teases. “And you, of course. He’s got us watching his six until he can watch his own.”

Steve chuckles. “I’m pretty sure he can handle watching his six in this state.” He stops, recalling a ten-year old Bucky getting up from his bed and crouching down to hold a shivering skinny Steve against his chest while he regained his breathing. “He’s never been a heavy sleeper, my fault actually. Whenever I got an asthma attack or a bad cough I would wake him up and he just… I don’t know. He got used to waking up a hundred times a night. During the war, we would have to bribe him in order to get him to take a nap. I don’t think he ever slept longer than a few hours at a time, now that I think about it.”

“He still does that,” Sam says pointing to the screen. “He sleeps in two hour intervals. Checks the perimeter, the furniture, and every square inch, even his own clothing before settling down. And then two hours later, he’s at it again. Like clockwork.”

“Some things don’t change,” Steve muses to himself. He takes a steady breath, turning to Sam, and asks, “He’s really in there, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, Steve, I think he is.”

* * *

Steve ends up falling asleep slumped over the chair next to Sam. He only wakes when Sam makes a sound or when he shifts in his seat. Before the war, before the serum, he had been a heavy sleeper unlike Bucky. There was little that could wake Steve, except Bucky. So, when he hears a sharp scream he is awake and alert right away. He stands up in one fluid motion that startles Sam who had been monitoring Bucky though the security feed.

Sam looks up at Steve and shakes his head, one hand pointing to the feed. Steve looks and his heart plummets.

“He’s just having a nightmare, like I told you,” Sam says sadly. “It’ll pass soon.”

“Does he - how often-”

“Every night at least once every few intervals. He usually wakes up right after and starts his rounds.” Sam swallows, his eyes flicker away from the screen whenever Bucky screams a little too loudly. “I, I haven’t seen someone have nightmares before… I’ve only ever had them. I want to say I know what he’s going through but I don’t, do I? My nightmares are nothing compared to what he must dream about.”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees softly. “Thank you for doing this. If it ever gets, you know, to be too much… I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to stop.”

“I want him to get better too, Steve. I might not know him since childhood but I know vets and he’s been through more shit than most people would be able to handle. I want to see him get better but I don’t want to risk you -”

“I know,” Steve interrupts and winces as Bucky continues to yell and thrash on the floor. “I have an appointment with that doctor you recommended. I won’t - he needs me to be better so I can help him.”

“It’s not that simple and you know it. How are your nightmares?”

“I don’t sleep enough to have them,” Steve admits.

“Steve…”

“I know.”

“Stop saying that.” They both turn when Bucky stops screaming and gets up. He looks around the room for a moment, his dark eyes looking at the camera for a moment before moving on. Steve can see his flesh arm shaking at side while his metal arm remains steady. “Why don’t you go sleep in your room?”

“You mean the cell with a cot in it that Fury says is my room? No, thanks.”

“Well you can’t stay here all night with me either,” Sam says. “Go write a report for Fury or something. You’ve got a meeting with him tomorrow, don’tcha?”

“I’ve got a meeting with him every goddamn day it feels like.”

“Well, that’s what being a Captain will getcha.”

Steve scoffs and reluctantly pushes himself off the chair. He runs a hand through his hair, looking at Bucky one more time before leaving. He offers Sam a small wave goodbye and heads into the maze that is the secret S.H.I.E.L.D facility that only Hill and Fury knew about until now.

A left through a dark hallway, then a right and another left until finally he’s in front of his door - his own personal converted cell with a too soft cot, a mirror hanging over a sink and a barely functioning toilet in the corner.

It reminds him a bit of the apartment Bucky and he shared before the war. Tiny, barren and in a bad neighborhood, just like he the old times.

He opens the door and steps inside, his mind trying to reconcile the memory against the current layout of the room. All that was missing was a small desk in the far left corner tucked between the wall and a stove and a window opposite of the bed. He used to look out into the city night and see nothing but a brick wall on the other side. Now, all he saw was a cement wall.

Things changes and yet, they didn’t.

Steve doesn’t bother to undress. He grabs a pillow and a blanket and lays on his back on the floor. He closes his eyes but all he can think about, all he can imagine behind his eyelids, is Bucky screaming, thrashing against the floor as another nightmare takes hold.

Steve stares into the ceiling, the screams he heard today mixing with the ones he had heard every day since the Alps. The way his heart felt when his Bucky’s fingers slipped through his, the way Bucky reached out for him as he fell, screaming his name, screaming for Captain America to save him and Steve, little Steve Rogers, being the only thing he got to save him. He’d failed his best friend - not the Captain, not the national hero - him, Steve Rogers from Brooklyn, had failed his one and only family.

He lets out a shaky breath and tries again to fall asleep.

* * *

_Steve stands next to the Howling Commandos and he feels right at home. Especially with Bucky at his side, he’s more grounded than he’s been in almost two years. He doesn’t feel the itch, the need to go out and do something stupid just so he can hear his heartbeat pounding in his chest, the adrenaline pumping through his veins._

_He used to hate having to wash the blood out of his shirts, hated having to scrub the fabric until his fingers ached. Usually it was Bucky who did that; not letting Steve do anything for hours after finding him beat up in an alley somewhere. Bucky had always been a mother hen, a sassy, shitty one but one nonetheless._

_Even now, when Steve gets a stray bullet in the thigh or a piece of shrapnel in his arm, Bucky just sighs and waves him over._

_“Hold this, you idiot,” he murmurs shoving one of Dum Dum’s special bottles in his hands._

_“I can’t get drunk anymore, you know that.”_

_“That ain’t for you,” Bucky says wiping the blood away from Steve’s wound. “It’s for me.”_

_“Ah.”_

_“No, don’t ‘ah’ me.” He pushes the rag into Steve’s flesh a little too rough, making the super-soldier flinch and flashing him a smirk. “I need steady hands to fix your stupid ass up after every mission. Don’t want to ruin an American treasure with some nasty scars, ya know?”_

_“You got the steadiest hands in the entire Army,” Steve pointed out. “I trust you with my life.”_

_“Yeah, yeah,” Bucky waves him off. “Ima sanitize some rags, you’re already healin’, punk.”_

_“Told you-”_

_“- Doesn’t stop me from -” he stops, a smile on his face quickly falling. Steve looks up, watching Bucky’s face fall._

_“Buck? Bucky what’s wrong?”_

_Bucky looks down at his chest, his hand swiping something from his chest._

_“Stevie…” he whispers. Steve follows Bucky’s hands and sees it. His blood runs cold._

_“No...”_

* * *

“No!” Steve sits up from his spot on the floor and gasps. The scene felt so familiar and yet... not right. He has to take a deep calming breath and repeat the same mantra over and over again until he still, "Bucky never got shot in the belly. Bucky didn't die in front of me. Bucky didn't die in my arms. Bucky didn't..."

There were times when his reality, the one he was living, felt like one of many. Sometimes memories, events both fiction and true, collided and, in his dreams, Steve re-lived them. Things he could've stopped, things he could have done different, things he should have ended better. The skeletons in his closet came back to haunt him whenever he tried to go to sleep. He wonders if its the same for Bucky, if his nightmares are about the things that were done to him. Or maybe the things that he did to others. Steve has those too. Being a soldier is almost synonymous with taking lives and Steve's done plenty of that. Every time he grabs his shield and slings it over his shoulder he knows that someone won't make it home to their family. Sometimes he wishes the shield were really there to protect rather than to kill. Sometimes he wishes he didn't have a shield at all.

Sometimes he wishes the shield hadn't warped into a weapon ... but isn't that what Steve himself was made to be? A weapon, one of it's kind, to strike at heart of America's enemies. Maybe Steve and Bucky were more alike than anyone wants to admit.

He lays awake, staring up at the ceiling, for the rest of the night, screams echoing in his head.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hot dogs and ketchup stains and shady things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank everyone who read, commented, kudos-ed and followed this story. Love you all! I hope you enjoy this chapter!

A few days later, after a meeting with Fury, Steve returns just in time for lunch. He had gotten nothing done on his end. Fury wouldn’t agree to much, if anything of what Steve asked for. He filed the correct requisition and request orders (and felt slightly nauseous to think that Bucky was reduced to a series of numbers and dashes on an official SHIELD form) but was denied every single time. At every one of their meetings, Steve would ask the reason why and all Fury would do was level him a look. Steve was tired of fighting - hell, he was tired of trying to get Fury to understand that the man they had ‘captured’ all those months ago was no longer the man they had. But it made no difference to the director.

He had texted Sam that morning, asking if he wanted any lunch while he was out. He got them a few burgers and fries, a couple of orders of fries and milkshakes. When he gets to the surveillance room, Sam turns from the screen and immediately gets up to help Steve with the bags of food.

“It’s almost lunch time for him,” Sam says as he opens the bags of food. “Wanna go have lunch with your boy?”

Steve smiles and looks to the screens. Bucky is sitting on the chair, hands on the metal table. From where the camera was positioned, Steve guessed he was staring into the door with those intense steel eyes of his.

“How’s he doing today?”

“Man, I went to give him breakfast and he didn’t even acknowledge my presence.” He takes out two burgers and places them on the table while Steve gets a comm link ready to use. Sam turns to him as he’s putting the link in his left ear, and asks pointing to the shakes, “Chocolate?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that a strawberry milkshake?” Sam asks, his eyes narrowed, pulling some fries from inside the bag. “Don’t tell me he-”

“He had a sweet tooth,” Steve interrupts, taking a step and grabbing the food from Sam. “I figured he might still have one. If not, he can have the vanilla one or the water.”

“He’s not used to this greasy food. He’s gotta have at least 5,000 calories a day and this is gonna be like two of his rations at once, you know that, right?” Sam calls out, making Steve halt by the door. Steve looks down at the food, the smile on his face wavering. But then Sam sighs and says, “If he throws up, you’re cleaning it up. Now go before I stop bein’ so nice!”  

Steve shoots him a smile and leaves the room and proceeds to the next one. He shuffles a bit, trying to balance the drink carrier and food while unlocking the door with his other hand. He nearly drops the carrier, an obscenity slipping out of his mouth before he can stop it, but rights them at the last second. He takes a steady breath pushing the door wider and sliding inside. He was right. Bucky was staring straight at the door, waiting. He straightens up in his chair, watching Steve put the food and drinks on the table.

“Brought you something new,” Steve says, opening the bag and taking the contents out. “Figured we could take a break from Sam’s cooking.”

“Sam makes the food?”

“Yeah. He’s basically the momma duckling feeding all of us,” Steve says, smiling when he hears Sam sputtering through his comm growling: _“_ **I am not a momma duckling and stop picking on my food!”**

Steve groups the food together. He could eat twice as much as what’s laid out, his body needing around 8,000 calories a day. But with Bucky, the problem laid in the fact that they didn’t know exactly what Zola had done to him. His blood showed a version of the serum that Steve had running through his veins.

The alterations were a mystery to them so far. Fury didn’t trust anyone at the moment, his circle of trustees was now down to just a handful of people. Most of which were here in the bunker and were not, in any way, scientists. They had a doctor, an army trained medic, an engineer and a few soldiers but other than that and the skills that Natasha, Clint, Sam and Steve had picked up along the way, were the only thing they had to keep them alive should something happen.

So, they can patch Bucky up. They can draw his blood, sedate him behind Steve’s back, fix minor things in his arm but they could not find out what was in his blood. Steve had suggested they contact Tony but Fury quickly rejected that idea. Tony was not as reckless and uncaring as Fury thought he was and Steve had said that exact thing but Fury shook his head and said no. If Fury really wanted to help Bucky he would find someone somewhere in the world to help, after all he was the director of what was formally S.H.I.E.L.D, it's not like he didn’t have contacts.

Steve had a feeling that Fury didn’t really want to find out and really didn’t care about Steve’s ‘pet project’ until there was some need for Bucky. But for now, hiding away in a secret S.H.I.E.L.D facility/bunker, was where Fury wanted Bucky to be. Steve just hoped there wasn’t going to be any aliens or robots or some other catastrophe coming their way any time soon.

He sits down on the chair opposite of Bucky with a smile. He was doing that a lot lately - smiling. He’d smiled at Clint earlier in the week and the man nearly dropped his coffee pot on the floor. Bucky doesn’t react to his smiles; he just looks at him, studying him. Steve wishes he could know what was running through his head. He wishes he could climb into Bucky’s head and - well, he doesn’t know what he would do but he would do something, anything, to help him. Greasy food was step one of his plan.

“So,” he says, leaning on his elbows on the table, “I brought us some burgers and hotdogs and milkshakes. Sam took all the fries but I don’t like fries anyway. I didn’t know what you liked so I got some plain and some how I like it.”

He unwraps a plain hot dog and puts it in front of Bucky. Steve remembers how, as kids, he used to tease Bucky whenever he bought a hot dog during a date because no matter how much he tried, he would always get some ketchup on his shirt. He used to love watching Bucky’s face whenever Steve pointed out the stains, his steel blue eyes narrowing to slits before murmuring, “Goddam, punk, always tryna make me look bad.” Steve would always reply with: “you’re doing that all by yourself, jerk.”

Eventually, Bucky started eating plain hot dogs while on his dates and would only adorn them with toppings whenever he was with Steve. Steve smiles just thinking about Coney Island and the Cyclone and throwing up after eating too many hot dogs and Bucky losing all his money to the carney because he was too stubborn to lose and -

He snaps out of the treasured memory when the Bucky in front of him, a new Bucky that he had to relearn about, reached for the hot dog and brought it to his lips slowly, taking a bite. He puts it down on the wrapper and chews silently, his eyebrows scrunches up and eyes on the table. When he’s done chewing, he looks up at Steve with wide, dilated eyes.

“I’m happy you like it. There’s plenty more where that came from, so eat up,” he encourages, unwrapping a burger. He sees Bucky hesitate, his flesh arm putting down the hot dog he had picked back up when Steve grabs his burger with both hands. He takes a chance and pushes the unwrapped burger towards Bucky and says, “Try the burgers too.”

For a second, he thinks he made a mistake. Yesterday, Sam had said something about giving Bucky too many options and he remembered the way his body had tensed up, his eyes widening with fear. But today, Bucky doesn’t hesitate to reach for the burger and mimicking Steve’s previous hand positions. He takes a long look at the burger, turning it left to right, and the bites into it, some of the juices squeezing out of the meat at the bottom, coating his fingers in oils.

This time, Bucky’s eyes close as he chews and Steve can almost hear a moan coming from him. He smiles, recalling how the first time he had had a burger in the 21st century he had the exact same expression on his face. If there was one thing he loved about fast food places, it was the way they managed to pack so many flavors into something so cheap and so bad for your body.

He reaches once more to the pile of food to his left and unwraps another burger. He grabs it and takes a bite, juices flowing freely just like they had when Bucky bit into his. Good thing he’d brought napkins. Except, looking into the bag he realizes Sam has taken them all. Well, looks like this pair of pants were going to have grease stains on them.

"Before the war," Steve begins as he unwraps a hotdog with all the trimmings. He hated relish but Bucky had always loved it. "We didn't have money for this type of food."

"We?" Bucky asks at the same time that Sam warns, " ** _don't do this, Steve_.** "

He hesitates for a second and then answers truthfully, "my best friend and I. We useta scrape together whatever money we could and treat ourselves once in awhile. He liked to go out dancing and to the movies. I liked to go to Coney Island or out to the docks."

"What happened to him?"

"Nothing," he replies, "he's around, somewhere. He's the only family I've got left. I'm hoping to see him soon, actually."

Bucky just hums in return, grabbing a hot dog for himself and unwrapping it.

"The relish useta make his breath smell horrible," Steve says mostly to himself, when he sees what Bucky’s picked. Extra relish, ketchup and mustard - all the fixings as Bucky used to say.

"Did not," comes the reply from the other side of the table. "It accentuates it."

 

" _God, your breath reeks!"_

_"What? No, it doesn't, smell me!” Bucky roars, exhaling in Steve face. Steve shoves Bucky away, and smiles. "Besides, relish highlights your breath, haven't ya heard?"_

_"More like demolishes everyone's nose," Steve corrects._

_"Stevie, goddamit.” Bucky ruffles Steve’s hair, leaning down slightly to say into his ear, “shuttup about my breath."_

_"You smell like onions.”_

_"My breath is fine."_

_"You could repel vampire with your breath, Buck."_

_"Oh, yeah, then how come your pale ass is still here?"_

 

Through his comm link he hears Sam warn again, more forcefully this time, " ** _stop this. It won't end well for either of you."_**

He sees Bucky pick up the hot dog and smiles. It was as if he hadn't said anything at all - an automatic reply. Something he said without thought because he'd said it so many times before. He lets it go for now, concentrating on his own food, trying not to smile like a goddamn fool.

He's about to take a sip of his vanilla milkshake when he hears a chair scraping the floor. He looks up. Bucky is crashing to the floor, his head between his hands, and his food on the table. He's rocking back and forth, his whole body tense, murmuring something Steve can't make out. He gets up slowly, trying not to panic, and goes around the table. He crouches a few feet from Bucky, trying to recall what Bucky used to say whenever Steve got a panic attack.

"Hey," he says as softly and unthreatening as possible. "It's alright. You just have to breathe, okay. Let's breathe together. Inhale and then exhale. There we go..."

He repeats it's a few times until Bucky follows, the rocking starts to stop, but he still cradles his head and his eyes are screwed shut. He wants to reach out, grab his hand and place on his chest by his heart just like Bucky used to do. But he can't. Not yet. Not when he just triggered him. Not when this attack was his fault. He should've known it was too fast. He shouldn't have tried to -

Bucky is crawling on the floor and in front of him before Steve even registers his movement. He hesitates, flesh hand outstretched towards Steve, his fingers shaking.  Steve doesn't hold back this time, he reaches out to grab his hand and pulls it until it touches his chest. He breathes in deeply, exhales. Again and again and again until Bucky slumps forward and Steve thanks the serum for his reflexes or else Bucky would have ended up face first on the floor.

Steve sits back, folding his legs under him, letting Bucky rest his head on his thigh, flesh hand still on his chest. Steve runs his right hand through Bucky's hair and smiles weakly. Yeah, he was going to see his buddy soon.

He doesn't know how long they remain in that position but it's enough that even his thighs start to hurt. He didn't want to move, though, didn't want to break whatever was going on between them at the moment. But he has to.

"Hey," he whispers, his fingers pulling a stray hair behind Bucky's ears. He sees his eyes open, blinking before recognition hits his face. It goes from calm and relaxed to alarmed and blank in a matter of seconds.

Steve felt a cold wash over him when Bucky sits up, pulling his hand away from Steve’s chest, and stands up and puts as much distance between them as he can by going to lay in his cot on the other side of the room. Steve sits on the floor for a few beats and then he too stands and walks away.

He can come back for the food later. Now, he needs to punch something.

* * *

"If I knew you were gonna do that, I wouldn't have let you go in there," Sam says as he passes by the surveillance room. "Next time, check with me before doing something this stupid."

Steve doesn't say anything, just keeps on walking because he doesn't need to hear how much he fucked up. He's got enough of that in his head, he doesn't need it to be said out loud. He hadn't meant to - Jesus. He just thought that it would - fuck he didn't know what he thought would happen. Certainly not that.

He goes to his room the roundabout way, his body twisting and turning with the underground bunker without his mind telling him where to go. He slips inside, letting out a deep breath, and then, calmly, he rounds and punches the wall with all he’s got. He feels the pain vibrating up his hand. He concentrates on that, uses it to ground himself, closing his eyes and trying to feel the pain spread. He’s had worse. He had been attacked by the Winter Soldier, twice, and lived to tell the tale. Not many people, except for Natasha, could claim that.

But this, the way his fingers are bruising and the broken skin begins to bleed, this feels like a million gunshots to the gut, a hundred broken ribs and several hundred feet drop down into a watery grave. Because this was Steve hurting Bucky. This was Steve inadvertently - was it really a mistake? Or is he just telling himself that? - triggering the man that he’d had held captive for six months in order to see a glimpse of the man he used to know.

He’d fucked up. God, had he fucked up.

* * *

"Why do you keep looking for confirmation?” Sam asks when Steve returns from jogging around the city. He hadn’t pushed himself so hard in a long time. It still didn’t feel good. He still couldn’t take back what he’d done to Bucky. At least now there was pain all over his body from having pushed his muscles so hard. At least now he felt something other than self-pity. “You know he's in there, you said it yourself last week.”

Steve stops and answers this time. "What if I'm wrong? What if Bucky's not -"

"Why would you think -"

"- Because when I look into his eyes, I don't see him!" He yells, too exhausted to stop himself. "I don't see my best friend in there! I don't see anyone in there!” He takes a careful breath, his eyes on the ground between them. His run had loosened a lot of tension, and his mouth it seemed. Sam crosses his arm in his ‘im-about-to-break-your-shit-down’ sort of way but Steve beats him to it by whispering, “And I'm scared, Sam, I'm ... Scared."

“I know,” Sam says. “You keep saying that. You’re scared, I get that, and I do. But you can’t keep blaming yourself for making mistakes. You got him to talk, to actually have a conversation with you. You got him to eat greasy food, to enjoy the greasy food. Steve, he looked relaxed. He actually looked relaxed eating with you. And he remembered something.”

“It sent him into a panic,” Steve argues.

“If you’re scared, how do you think he feels? He’s remembering things that he’s got little to no recollection of doing. I would be terrified if I had a memory running around in my head of eating hot dogs that I didn’t remember eating, wouldn’t you?” Sam sighs. “He’s going to freak out a little each time but, as much as you’ll hate it, he’s gonna get used to the panic eventually. He’s gonna learn to cope with it and understand the memories, sort them out in his own way. He’s a smart man, he knows how to survive.”

“Okay,” Steve says carefully. “Okay. I get it.”

“Okay,” Sam repeats. “Now go shower cuz you stink.” Steve walks away, stopping by the door that held Bucky. He turns to Sam, who rolls his eyes and says, “You’ve got five minutes before your nasty b.o kills him. Go on.”

* * *

Sam shakes his head, his eyebrows scrunching when he sees Steve smile like a kid who was given a key to a candy store and told to go wild. It was great to see Steve smile, not that Sam had known him for a very long time. Hell, it must be almost as long as they had found his dead best friend walking around. Steve went from having only S.H.I.E.L.D operatives to having an ex- Air Force and an ex-Hydra assassin having his back. Even if the latter didn’t know it yet. Pretty soon, Steve would get through the walls that his friend had set up and they could start the real work.

Sam wasn’t stupid. The moment they captured the Winter Soldier (aka Bucky Barnes, aka the jackass who tore the steering wheel from his car!) he had gotten his hands on the man’s file. It was… not an easy read that’s for sure. And that's just what Sam could read. More than half of the file was redacted and they knew, thanks to the Shield leak, that was only half of the story.

Sam had had some strong words with Natasha about the way they were treating Bucky after finishing the file. They, obviously, had gone to deaf ears and he was still kinda pissed about that.

Right off the bat, Sam hadn’t like the cell he was placed in. First off, he shouldn’t have been put in a cell to begin with but even Steve had conceded that Barnes was dangerous to those around him for the moment. He’s looked down and at the floor when he’d said that, his voice softer than anything Sam had ever heard before.

Second off, they had picked the worst cell out of the entire bunker. The thing gave even Sam the creeps. Seriously, who decided a single light source would be enough when there weren’t even windows in the damn walled room. And cement? Who made the walls out of cement and thought, ‘yes, this is where we need to put a seventy-year war veteran with trust and identity issues and with a history of torture’ in. That has also gone to deaf ears, this time Director Fury. Sam was really starting to hate that guy.

And then, god, and this is what really pissed Sam “cool as a cucumber” Wilson off. They injection something _into_ Barnes. He hadn’t seen it at first, what with being stuck in the room with all the television and having Barton as a distraction behind him chattering about everything and anything, but he was sure the doctors were injecting him with something along with taking some blood. It had taken Sam a few more viewings and a whole less Barton, who seemed to appear and disappear at a moment’s notice, until Sam finally saw it.

He watched the next week and paid close attention, distracting Barton with some coffee and a large box of donuts, and he saw it. Immediately, he’d rounded on Barton, taken the coffee from him and demanded to know what the hell was going on. Pouting but not at all afraid, Barton had just motioned with his thumb and said, “Ask Nat.”

So he had. And he’d been utterly terrified to have his suspicions confirmed. Again, Fury. But this time, they had relented and stopped giving Barnes drugs. Sam hadn’t even asked what they were, he did not want to know - he just threatened to tell Steve. Fury didn’t look happy being threatened but Sam had promised Steve he would watch over his best friend and this, this was Sam doing his damndest to keep that promise. Sam didn’t break promises. Not ever.

But he never told Steve a word and now, sitting behind the monitors and watching Steve walk into the dark room, he decides he has to. Now that Barnes is talking, actively interacting with Steve, there was no way that he wouldn’t tell Steve about the weekly doctor visits. Steve already knew that they took blood but if there was any chance that Barnes hadn’t been fully under sedation, Sam didn’t want to be in Steve’s warpath when he found about the drugs.

Sam leans forward on the table and looks at Steve Rogers, Captain America, the man that little Sam Wilson read about as a kid. The man standing there in sweats with a white shirt clinging to his super-serumed body, sweaty from having ran god only knows how many miles, was not what Sam had expected. Hell, he wasn’t even the man Sam had met a few months ago. You know, the one who had ran circles around Sam while jogging and then, later, came to his house when he ran out of friends. This, this was a version of Steve that no one had ever seen - except maybe, his best friend, Bucky Barnes.

During the initial briefing with Fury when they had first gotten Barnes under control, Steve had been in the hospital. For a few days cuz that asshole’s body healed faster than Sam had ever expected. In his place, Sam had gone to the meeting. He’d listened to the ‘official’ story that surrounded the Howling Commandos and their leader Captain America and his second-in-command Sergeant Barnes. And then he’d gone to the hospital and gotten the actual story from someone who had actually been there and not some historians taking accounts of events after they’d happened and were all but memories.

Steve had gone quiet, his eyes impossibly sad, and Sam had instantly regretted asking him about Bucky Barnes.

“He was - is - my best friend,” Steve said, his hands gripping the white bed sheets tight enough to rip. “When he fell,” he stopped and took a deep breath, “everything stopped. He’s the only family I’ve got left. The only family I had for a long time. My mum… she, um, died when I was eighteen and for a while I struggled to be on my own. But then Bucky - he got me through the worst of it. Made sure I ate and got up for class everyday. He never gave up on me, Sam, never.” He looked up at Sam and the look he’s gotten had made Sam’s blood turn cold. “I’m going to make them pay for what they did to Bucky.”

Which, you know, made sense why Sam really, really didn’t want to be the one to tell Steve about the drugs. Sam asked a few more questions, mostly about their time in Europe, carefully avoiding the fall from train that Fury had tagged in as a last thought in their earlier conversation. By the time the doctors shooed Sam away, he was determined to protect Barnes. And that’s when he’d made himself promise, a promise he later told Steve.

Now, he watches Steve approach the table they had sat at and ate on earlier. He has his hands on his hips, looking every bit a concerned mother right up to his scrunched up eyes. Barnes looks from his cot and his body relaxes instantly. Sam would not have thought so, but the man almost looks … annoyed to have Steve fussing around. But then again, Sam was only looking at Barnes from the side, the man’s profile being the only thing the camera reached.

“You didn’t finish,” Steve points out, clearing away the mess that they had left.

If the damned system wasn’t so high tech and shit, Sam is sure he would have missed Barnes, very softly, softer than any assassin should be able to, whisper, “you left.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” Steve replies, putting everything back down and rounding the table.

He gets as close as he can to the cot Barnes is on and crouches on the floor, sitting down on it with his legs stretched out in front of him. Barnes hesitates and then slides off the bed and mirrors Steve, sitting on the floor just a little to the right of Steve. Their legs don’t quite touch but they are close enough that should one of them - oh shit! Sam almost hits his head on the monitor from leaning forward and squinting at it.

Okay, he wasn’t, like, one hundred percent sure but, what with Steve’s smile, he was pretty sure that Barnes’ foot was touching Steve’s thigh. What. The. Fuck.

“If I had a choice,” Steve says, “I wouldn’t leave you at all.”

Sam hears the hint of truth in that statement and it leaves him with a thought. A semi-wild, totally out there and yet not that out there considering what –

“Why am I here?” Barnes asks, his voice returning to its steady inflectionless tone.  _One step forward and two steps back,_ Sam thinks.

Steve looks to the camera for a second and then at Barnes and Sam knows he’s about to do something stupid. They’d talked about this, how many times? How many pamphlets and links had Sam made Steve read through before even letting him go into the room? And he was gonna throw it all away just two weeks after Barnes had started talking on his own without prompt?

“You’re here to recover,” Steve says.

“Recover,” Barnes repeats, nodding like he understands. “The chair no longer works. I… understand.”

“That’s not what I –“ Steve stops, running his hand through his hair. “You don’t understand.”

“I’m being decommissioned because I failed my mission.”

“You’re not being decommissioned,” Steve says firmly.

“I failed my mission, I was captured by you and not assigned a new handler.” Barnes’ inflection remains steady, as if they were talking about a gun that stopped working. “You are not my handler.”

“No, I’m not,” Steve agrees and he says the stupid thing Sam had expected a few moments ago. “I am your friend.”

“I do not have friends,” Barnes immediately replies. “It is not necessary to have friends to –“

“We’ve always been friends, Buck. Whether you remember that or not, I will always be your friend.”

Barnes doesn’t say anything for a long time; they just stare at each other. Code, words left unsaid between friends, things that meant nothing to others and everything to each other. It was a bit nerve wrecking.

Sam wonders if Barnes registered that Steve had called ‘Buck’. He doesn’t acknowledge it, doesn’t seem to even flinch. But then something in Barnes’ face does changed because Steve stills, his eyes briefly look towards the camera and then back at Barnes who is pulling away, trying to get as far away from Steve as possible. He stands up, going back to his place on the bed, left knee bent and metal arm hanging off, like some cool dude off of Grease or something. Steve stays on the floor, legs outstretched. Sam shakes his head and sighs. He’d told Steve that it would be a long process, told him that whatever conditioning and memory loss Barnes had wouldn’t just go away.

Sure, their interactions clearly woke something within the man but waking up a loose memory, remembering loose facts, was nothing compared to seventy-years of memory loss. It would take time, lots and lots of time and a whole slice of pain - for both Steve and Barnes. Sam thought Steve understood that but judging by the way he sat up, slowly as if he lost all the energy his super body had, it looks like Steve didn’t.

When Steve goes to leave the room, gathering all the food from earlier in his arms, Sam gets up and meets him in the hall.

“I - I thought I had him,” Steve admits, dumping the half-eaten hot dogs and burgers and untouched shakes in the garbage can just inside the surveillance room. “I thought I saw a little Bucky in his eyes and then - then it was just gone.”

“Hey, at least he didn’t shut down completely,” Sam points out. Then he coughs, unsure how to bring up what he has to say. “So, listen, I’ve been thinking about his miraculous turnaround-”

“Yeah, I wanted to ask about that too,” Steve interrupts, walking into the room and sitting down on one of the seats. “Is it because he's been away from Hydra, from their torture device? Or maybe I-”

“I don’t think that’s it,” Sam interjects, sitting down next to Steve. He glances at the monitor and sees that Barnes hasn’t moved an inch. He turns to Steve, rubbing his hands on his thighs trying to gather his thoughts. Here goes nothing, he thinks.

* * *

Steve barges into Fury’s makeshift office in his Captain America regalia early the next morning. Sam had talked him down from talking to Fury last night, saying that it wouldn’t do any good if Steve let his emotions take the better of him. A good night sleep, Sam said, would help to clear his mind.

Except Steve doesn’t sleep at night without being haunted by nightmares and warped memories from his past. He sees Bucky in them all, the way his eyes used to shine before the war, so young and levelheaded, and then now, his face blank and ready for orders. It sickened Steve to think about what Hydra and the damned Russians did to his best friend.

It sickened him even more to think Fury had lied to him about the doctors and nurses that Steve allowed in to see Bucky. Steve had trusted Fury to an extent and this is what he got? Maybe his first instinct about the man had been right. After all, Fury was the master of compartmentalization. That’s how SHIELD was run and that’s how Hydra took it over slowly.

Natasha and Clint are waiting for Steve outside, probably betting on who ends up more banged up: Fury or Steve. If there was one thing that Steve had by the dozens, it was anger. Much like Doctor Banner, Steve kept that all inside until the right moment when he had to land the right hit or throw his shield at the right angle for maximum damage. Then he let his ‘other guy’ out. It was a problem he had since he was skinny and 90 pounds soaking wet. Only Bucky knew how to calm him down effectively. And Bucky wasn’t here right now so…

“What the hell are you -”

“I’m only going to ask once,” Steve warned, his fists balling at his side. “What were you doing to Bucky?”

“What makes you think we were -”

“I saw the recordings!” Steve yells, leaning forward on the desk, his fist on the wood. “Your doctor isn’t as crafty as he thinks he is. I saw them inject Bucky with something!”

“That something is not -”

“Do. Not. Compartmentalize. This.” Steve says slowly. “I need to know what you’re doing to him.” Steve clenches his jaw and tries to looks as imposing as he can. Fury doesn’t even look fazed. “I have never asked you for -”

“- you asked me, just six months ago, to help you keep a wanted man hidden in a secret facility so you could play house with him,” Fury interrupts, getting up from behind his desk. Steve takes a step back but doesn’t let his face change. “I don’t have to tell you anything. Just like I don’t press you when you omit things from your briefings, like the fact that he’s talking. When were you going to tell me that?”

“When were you going to tell me you were drugging him?”

“Alright,” Fury offers, sitting back down. He crosses his arms over his chest and adds, “I’ll tell you if you tell me, how’s that sound?”

“How do I know you’ll tell me the truth?”

“Right back at ya, Captain.”

Steve thinks about it for a second, looking away from Fury and thinking about Bucky, trapped inside the cell with only a handful of people and Sam to look out for him. He should be there, at his side, just like when they were kids, and not here fighting a battle against a man who knew he couldn’t lose. But Steve could never back down from a fight; it was in his blood so to speak.

“He’s only talking to me,” Steve says. “Remembers fighting on the helicarrier, not much of anything else.”

“Or he hasn’t said anything else,” Fury corrects him. “My turn? Unless there’s more you need to tell me?” Steve shakes his head, willing his eyes not to betray him. “I ordered the good doctor to slip him some help. Some drugs that we know have worked in the past in recovering lost memories. It wasn’t working so we had no reason to continue it.”

“Why would you hide this from me?”

“For this exact reason,” Fury says opening his arms and pointing between the two men. “It was better for you not to know. He might be under your care and he might be your responsibility but if things come to fruition, it will be me who will be answering questions about Barnes. SHIELD cannot afford to let Barnes out into the public without knowing that he is stable, relatively speaking of course.”

“SHIELD is no more,” Steve protests. “It’s over, the only reason I haven’t taken Bucky and disappeared is because I need your resources. Resources, which you are unwilling to give me, so there’s really no reason for me to be here, to keep putting Bucky in danger.”

“Yet you remain here, under my watchful eye in my own backyard. You could’ve run at any time, Rogers. Even my resources have limits.”

“I trust him,” Steve says. “I do not trust you.”

“And what happens when your trust in him runs out? What happened when he does something that puts everyone in danger?” Fury demands.

“If anything happens, it’ll be on my head.”

“And what about while you are in Belarus?” Fury asks. “Who will care for Barnes then?”

“Sam can handle anything Bucky might do. I trust him.”

“I am willing to compromise if you are,” Fury says, unblinking. “I will stay out of your way, leave Barnes and the entire facility under your command, if you give me detailed, accurate weekly reports. And if anything goes wrong, anything at all, you will take full responsibility.”

Steve knows that he can’t trust Fury, not fully. Not when Bucky is concerned. He knows in his heart that Fury and SHIELD do not have Bucky’s best interests in mind. Steve has to protect him, the way Bucky used to protect Steve. It’s time to pay back a debt owed.

“You have a deal.”

“Very well, Captain.” Fury gets up once more, this time he stretches his hand towards Steve. “Now, shouldn’t you be off blowin’ up a Hydra base with the rest of your team?”

As he walks away, he begins to think it was too easy. Fury was too calm, too giving. He shoots Sam a text and then goes off to Belarus, off to make those Hydra bastards pay for what they did to Bucky and find some answers.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote the 'hot dog' scene from Bucky's point of view originally before deciding on Steve side. Any interest in reading it from Bucky side?


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alley brawls, angry eyepatches and runaway memories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This starts off right before Steve goes in with the junk food, skips the actual eating scene and then goes off into the sad bits. Sorry. Love you.

The Soldier hasn’t slept much since the night that Captain Rogers, the man with the wide shoulders and familiar blue eyes, asks his name. It feels wrong, sour on his tongue, to call himself Steve out loud. Even the coffee he drinks after being interrupted doesn’t wash the taste out of his mouth. He likes the coffee, finds himself even craving it once Captain Rogers is out of the room. The bitter taste with only a splash of sugar made him wonder when he had drunk coffee before. He surely never got it while on missions for Hydra.

He doesn’t remember … he doesn’t remember a lot of things. He shouldn’t _want_ anything, shouldn’t _crave_ anything. That was not what he was _made_ for, he shouldn’t feel, shouldn’t need - it is not part of his mission.

He likes asking Captain Rogers. He likes hearing his voice. He likes it when he smiled. He likes his eyes… the way they make him feel, they way they push him to the edge of his reality and into the dream fantasy that he’s created in his head.

He is breaking down faster than expected he -

He hates the way Rogers’ questions make him question himself. He hates the look in Rogers' eyes when he gives an answer that he doesn’t like. He hates the attention, they way his blue eyes trace his every move as if his being there is a marvel he can’t get enough of. He hates… the softness of his eyes, the way they wrinkle at the side when he smiles. He hates the smiles, the ones that leave the Soldiers breathless and with an itch in the back of his mind. He hates the way Rogers brings out the feeling that something is not quite right with the Soldier, the way he reminds him that he’s broken.

But the Soldier does not hate. The Soldier _should_ not - he closes his eyes and then opens then immediately. He’s resisted sleep for four intervals, he could go days without sleep. He _has_ gone days without sleep. And yet, he sits behind the metal table, hands on the surface, eyes on the door waiting, and he continues to doze off. He snaps away every time his chin hits his chest, his mind too clouded. He wasn’t drugged, of that he is sure. Captain Rogers wouldn’t -

The Russians used to do the same thing. Keep him comfortable; make him feel safe, before taking it all away when he fell asleep. He would wake up in the chair, snapping awake with a shout when the first current of electricity hit his body. And then the words were said, pushing the little bit of himself he had held onto while awake, pushing away the illusion that he was a person, a human being, until there was nothing but compliance.

He couldn’t fall asleep; he couldn’t even close his eyes, not now.

Every time he does, the part of him that resists his conditioning, his mission, everything he stands for, takes over. And that scares him. Any moment now, Rogers will come into his cell and recite the words. Any moment, Rogers will open that door and push the chair inside and make him compliant. Any moment now, Rogers will make him forget blue eyes, kind smiles and shaky laughter.

They were coming in faster now - the memories. The more he resists sleep, the more they try to claw their way out of the darkest parts of his mind, breaking down the wall between the reality he knew and the life he saw behind his eyelids. It isn’t real - what he sees. It’s the walls, the isolation. He hasn’t been alone, without order, without a handler for a long time.

Winter of 1973, his brain supplies. Train from Dallas, uncomfortable and wet from having been standing in the rain waiting for it, to Chicago, a city that smelled like sewage and dampness or maybe the latter had been him. From Chicago to New York City, his chair kicked by a small child behind him until all The Soldier can do was turn around and glare, to a flophouse in Brooklyn that looked familiar, so familiar.

Screams, doors kicked off their hinges, people running abandoning their cots and blankets on the floor in favor of running away as the men in black body armor and guns approach. He let’s himself get taken, his disappointment too great to resist when they finally sedate him. Then the chair snaps him away and pain… so much unending pain.

He shakes his head, shaking away the sleep that was itching its way across his drooping eyes. He can’t remember those things, he can’t keep trying, it hurts too much to try. Painful, unwanted and jarring pains - he doesn’t want to. No! He mustn’t think about it!

The walls around him close in, taunting him. The light bulb blurs, the bright light blinds him. He feels his hands grip the edges of the table, his throat closes up, his lungs protest. His chest aches. His metal arm burns at his shoulder. The metal plates in it shift, his eyes snap to his arm looking at it as if for the first time. Then he hears _him._

_“You are to be the new fist of Hydra.”_

That’s it. He’s a fist. A weapon. A weapon does not ache. A weapon does not sleep. He is but a piece of wood, sharpened to a fine metal point that is to be thrust into a man’s chest. A weapon does not -

But _he_ does ache. He does sleep. He eats. He urinates. Weapons do not urinate. Do not require substance. But he does. And yet he is a tool. A fist. A weapon. A soldier in a war between two enemies. An asset to mankind. He’s the -

The door opens and the Soldier lets go of the table, registering the way the metal bent at his strength. He can think of several uses for the metal and its malleability, the chair as well. He can use it to -

He hears a gasp and a silent curse coming from the opened door. He swallows, struggling to push back the memory that claws at his mind and finding that he doesn’t want it to go away.

 

_“Shit,” he hears when he enters the apartment. He smiles, closing it behind him and tugging off his coat. His takes his shoes off, pushing them against the wall in the small hallway, making sure that Stevie couldn’t trip on them on his way. He already has the rent to worry about; he didn’t need another head injury to land Steve in the hospital._

_“Stevie, you okay?” he calls out. He gets a small gasp in return coming somewhere down by the bathroom and hears things falling to the floor. “Steve?”_

_“I-I’m okay, Buck! You’re early!”_

_“Yeah, pal, I am,” he - Buck? - says going towards the bathroom. He stands by the door, craning his head to the left trying to hear inside. “That a problem?”_

_“No, no, Bucky,” Steve says, opening the door. “I wasn’t expectin’ you, that’s all.”_

_Bucky eyes rake over Steve. His thin body, the shirt that was a size too big opened to reveal his undershirt, sweaty and sticking to his pale skin, his flushed cheeks, the sweat on his forehead. His heart speeds up, his hands reach to touch Steve’s forehead, using the back of his hand to feel his temperature. Sticky from sweat but not hot. He cradles Steve’s head, turning him from one side to the other, checking for the red eyes, the clawed at throat that he usually has after an asthma attack._

_“Did you - “_

 

The soldier rights himself in his seat as Captain Rogers closes the door behind him, balancing a bag and two drinks on top a drink carrier. The soldier waits, watching as Rogers deposits the food on the table and says, “brought you something new.”

The Russians might have been better than the Americans. But Captain Rogers, here in the moment, the softness of his voice and vulnerability in his eyes, was better than anything the Russians could hope to take from him.

* * *

Later the Captain approaches the table slowly, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched forward. He’s trying make himself smaller, he thinks, as if hunching will make the bulk of his shoulders disappear. After the weak moment he’d had earlier, he doesn’t expect the Captain to be so shy.

He’d thrown himself at the Captain a few hours ago, pushed himself into his space and he expected to be punished for losing control. The Captain might be nice now, might be indulging him like no one else ever has but that doesn’t mean this isn’t some angle being played. Let him become soft; let his guard down before crashing it all around him.

Already he’s melting the blue eyes and blond hair from his dreams with the Captain’s own face. Their voices mixing, combining into one whenever he closed their eyes. He almost thought they might be the same person; the hot dogs almost convinced him of that too.

The explosion of images that exploded behind his eyes when he took a bite of the hot dog were unlike anything he remembers ever experiencing. But that can’t be right. He knew what to do. He knew to reach for the Captain’s touch, to exhale and inhale with the rhythm of his chest, to slump forward onto the man’s thighs and let him card his fingers through his long hair. He felt better immediately, the images slowing down until they ceased.

He’s still not sure how long they spent on the floor or how long it took to control his breathing but the memories stopped, he felt his heart stop. He wanted them, wanted to warmth that spread through his body with every flash that he saw. He wanted to feel the way his mind told him he should. Happy. Content. Safe.

But he wasn’t safe.

He wasn’t happy. He didn’t deserve to be happy. So he’d pulled himself away from the touch, the warmth, and laid on the cot. He waited until the Captain had left before gasping loudly enough that he’s sure the cameras picked it up. He hoped - wished - that the man would return, would wrap his arms around him, help him remember more blue eyes and shy smiles, thin fingers and worn down pencils. But the door remains closed.

Until now.

Until he steps into the room, shoulders forwards, eyes on the table. The Captain pushes the wrappers with one finger and he feels his body relax, the tension he’s held in his muscle melting away when he says, collecting the wrappers, “You didn’t finish.”

“You left,” he whispers, his voice softer than he intended. But there’s a ball in his throat and his breathing is becoming difficult. He briefly remembers the panic he’d felt earlier and tries to control himself. He couldn’t let himself be weak, not in front of him, not when he didn’t know what the man’s endgame was yet.

The Captain rounds the table and, in one swift movement, sits on the floor with his legs stretched out in front of him. He hesitates for one second, still remembering earlier. He wants to feel the man’s touch, he _needs_ to feel the warmth again, it’s the only thing that makes his remember, makes him feel like he’s complete after so long… he slides off the cot and to the floor, mirroring the man.

When his left foot touches the Captain’s thigh, he sees the man smile. His heartbeat speeds up, his hands itching to wrap themselves around the Captain’s feet, a reflex he doesn’t remember ever developing. It’s like his hands know they should be messaging the man’s feet, as if it was part of a routine he didn’t remember having. He tries for a smile; he hasn’t smiled in a long time. It makes the other man’s eyebrows scrunching, his eyes fluttering.

“If I had a choice, I wouldn’t leave you at all.”

He takes a risk, knowing it could land him in real trouble. But if the man truly is better than the Russians then … then the Soldier must know.

“Why am I here?”

The Captain falters, looking to the camera as if it holds the answer to the question. The Soldier wonders if he wishes he had a comm in his ear right about now, telling him what to say. He wonders if Rogers feels naked and alone without one the same way he feels naked without orders. Then blue eyes meet his and Rogers says softly, “you’re here to recover.”

“Recover?” he repeats, the word sounding too familiar. Something in the back of his mind snap away, pulling him forwards, protecting him from the harsh memories that the word brings to him. But it’s too late. He knows what it means to recover. It means ice, coldness and nothingness. “The chair no longer works. I… understand.”

“That’s not what I-” Rogers says urgently, his words laced with anger. The Soldier holds back a smile. That’s the real Captain Rogers right there, he thinks, the one hiding just under the surface. “You don’t understand.”

The Soldier narrows his eyes slightly and decides to push, “I’m being decommissioned because I failed my mission.”

“You’re not being decommissioned.”

He keeps his voice steady, unemotional, and continues to push just to see what would happen. “I failed my mission. I was captured by you and not assigned a new handler. You are not my handler.”

Rogers’ jaw clenches, the muscles in his jaw visibly working even under a thickening layer of stubble. “No, I am not.” He stops; taking a deep breath looking like it pains him to inhale. “I am your friend.”

“I do not have friends,” the Soldier replies immediately, his heart fluttering in his chest with an unknown feeling. “It is not necessary to have friends to -”

“We’ve always been friends, Buck. Whether you remember that or not, I will always be your friend.”

This time it is the Soldier who clenches his jaw hard enough that his teeth hurt from the pressure. Memories of walking by an alley, of hearing yelling and screaming and punches connecting cloud his eyes. He concentrates, keeping his eyes on his left leg, the one brushing Rogers’, and let’s himself remember, anything to make this feeling go away. He needs to bring back the coldness from before. He should know better than to let his mind wonder by now.

 

_He’s the oldest of four children living in a small flat in Brooklyn. After Becca was born, his dad picked the whole crew up and moved them to New York from Indiana. Bucky didn’t remember much about Indiana, only flashes of a house with broken windows and a tiny yard. He remembers coughing the first few days after unpacking in the strange new apartment. The stale air and fumes different from the ones he was used to in Indiana. There were more people too, always moving, never stopping. Bucky liked that._

_He was thirteen when he walks by the alley a few blocks away from his house. At first he doesn’t stop, just walks by, but the he hears a whimper and some laughing. He turns and peeks from around the building. There’s three kids he doesn’t recognize circling a smaller kid with blond hair. The smaller kids got a mouth on him, snarking the bullies even though they towered over him._

_Bucky almost walks away again, thinking the kid can handle himself. But then the older of the three pushes him, two hands on the kid’s chest, until he hits the brick wall._

_“Not giving you… a red … cent,” the kid yells, his voice a little breathless._

_The bullies taunt him, calling him names and then, the older one punches him, yelling, “I’ve got nothing to do all day!”_

_“I’ll say!” Bucky calls out approaching the group, his hands ready into fists. The older kid turns to him, tells him to mind his own business. “It is my business.” He throws a punch, his knuckles hitting the bully right in the nose. “You shaking down little kids every day is makin’ me nauseous!”_

_When the bully falls to the ground, cradling his hand to his face, Bucky hears a loud crash and turns. The kid that they were bullying slammed a trashcan lid into one of the other bullies, the strength making the kid fall next to his friend, almost crashing into Bucky. The third kid looks frightened and backs away, hands up. When his friends get up, the three of them run away like the scared punks they were._

_Bucky turns to the blond kid with a grin. “We sure showed them, huh?”_

_“I had ‘em on the ropes!” the kids protests. “I had ‘em beat!”_

_“Oh, yeah. They were sure shivering with fright,” Bucky deadpans._

_“I coulda handled them myself!”_

_“That’s great. But maybe next time, bring some backup.” Bucky extends a hand to the kid. “Names James Buchanan Barnes.”_

_“Steve Rogers,” he says shaking his hand. “That’s one helluva name, you got there.”_

_He shrugs. “My friends call me Bucky.”_

_“Well, thanks I guess,” Steve says turning to walk away._

_Bucky follows him, bumping his shoulder on the way. “I’ve got my allowance today. Want go get a soda with me?”_

_“I don’t have any money.”_

_“Hey, now,” Bucky says with a smile. “What kind of a friend would I be if I didn’t share my money with you?”_

_Steve stops walking, the words sinking in. And then - this part Bucky will remember forever - he flashes a toothy smile and says, “thanks… Bucky. You’re a real pal, you know that?”_

_“Sure am, punk.” He bumps his shoulder against Steve and smiles back._

_“And now you ruined it, jerk.”_

 

The Soldier - no, Bucky - doesn’t do anything, his body going still. He’s trying hard to remember, to connect his body to the name, to the feeling, to everything he’s seen in his mind over the last few hours. He feels exhausted but his heart is pounding harder than ever. The only other time he remembers feeling this way was - oh god.

He was on a bed, a bright light above him. His body feels heavy, numb. He blinks. There’s people around him talking a language he doesn’t recognize as english. He raises one hand and then the other. The machines behind him beat loudly when he sees the metal, the glint coming off the metal digits as he moved them. Oh God. He struggles, grabs a man by the throat and throws him with the metal arm. He hears him crash. Tries to get up but his feet won’t move. Then something is shoved over his face and…

 _What did they do to me?_ He wonders horrified, memories coming in faster and faster. He looks up, into blue eyes, and jumps up from the floor. _I remember,_ he thinks, _I … remember you. Oh, god._

He goes to the bed, sitting on it, back against the cold cement wall, one leg bend at the knee, left hand hanging off it. He tries to play it off, tries not to let it show what a single word - one syllable - has done to him. He can’t show Rogers his weakness. He can’t, not before he finds out the truth.

He watches Rogers get up. He watches him gather the wrappers and walk away. He watches the door close, counts to five before he hears the click of the door locking automatically behind him. And then, and only then, does he crumble. Cameras be damned.

* * *

The Soldier feels weak. He feels inadequate. He _feels_. He has a _name_. A weapon should _not_ have a name. He’s got no handler. He’s got no mission. No instructions. No parameters. He’s just… James Buchanan Barnes.

Bucky, to his friends.

Familiar name, _his_ name, and yet not.

He was the asset. A soldier. A machine. Not… Bucky.

But he’d been weak, giving into the need for touch just on the second day of inter - no, Captain - Steve - said it wasn’t an interrogation. They were just talking, eating. He wanted them to be friends but the Soldier - Bucky - didn’t know what he wanted.

Except he did.

He wanted Steve Rogers. He wanted to touch him more, to be touched by him, held by him like he had been just a few hours ago. The touch still lingers, fingers raking through his hair, comforting words being said, a hand on his wrist.

He misses the sound of Steve’s heartbeat, steady. Was it always steady?

He misses the rise and fall of Steve’s chest, rhythmic. Was his chest always firm?

He misses … blue eyes and blond hair dominating his dreams.

Now, now it’s broad shoulders tapered into a small waist. Strong-arms nearly tearing shirtsleeves, shirt hanging slightly looser around the waist where khakis began. Blue uncertain eyes, wrinkling eyebrows, strong jawline and red lips hiding perfect teeth, crooked nose and a spattering of freckles across his cheeks. Now, he dreams of this Steve Rogers. His Steve - his tiny Stevie - is gone, replaced by this Steve, his captor, the idiot man in red, white and blue. The one who stared him down while the world crashed around them. The man who laid there as he punched him over and over and over again. The man who …

He laughs, the sound echoing around the empty room, thinking how disappointed his previous handlers would be if they saw him now. Two weeks, that’s all it took for his walls to start to crumble. Two moments of weakness is all it took for him to stop caring about the reality of his situation and the absurdity of his dreams. Are they one in the same?

He looks to his left side where, embedded into the wall, lays a camera. Always watching him. He wonders if Steve is there now, leaning forward in his seat, his eyebrows scrunched up concentrating on the Soldiers - Bucky’s - face. He wonders when he’ll be back. When he’ll touch him again, make him feel like a person again. Make him feel whole again. He winks at the camera in hopes that it is Steve on the other side.

Bucky - that’s his name after all, he should get used to it if he’s to ride this out till the end - gets up from the cot, grabs the blanket and pillow from it and lays them out on the floor. He looks at it and then lies down on the floor on top of the blanket, staring at the ceiling. After a moment he turns on his left side, pulling the pillow from under his head to cradle it against his chest with his right arm.

His back to the door, ignoring the way the hair on the back of his neck stands; he closes his eyes and tries to remember James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky. Him.

* * *

He was a soldier in a war he remembers that. The itchy brown uniform that would stain easily was the only thing he had given away upon arriving to Europe. When he got his new uniform, dark pants, jacket and light shirt, he discarded the dress uniform, selling it for a pack of cigarettes and sweets for the younger boys in his battalion. He sold everything but the hat, he kept the hat, in it hiding the only thing the war hadn’t taken from him.

Besides the letters in his hat, he carried a photo in his new jacket pocket. His mother Winnie, her dark hair pulled up into a bun, his dad George, looking right into the camera with a stern look, his three sisters, looking every bit as bored as he was. Then there he was, shoulders held back, his head held high with a quirk of his lips. And then Steve, with a jacket that looked too big, hanging off his thin shoulders, the sleeves going past his fingers, with a shy smile on his face.

He remembers his mother scolding him, his father looking at him with a look that told him to obey his mother. But how could he? Steve had just told him he looked pretty as button with his hair slicked back like that. Before Bucky could laugh, the picture had been taken. At the time he was surprised it had actually come out well considering he’d snorted and burst into howls of laughter just a few seconds afterwards with Steve following behind him after his mother smacked Bucky upside the head.

He was a killer in another war, he remembers that too. The thick Kevlar biting into his skin when the wind would pick up, the weapons strapped to his body making his muscle tense in order to keep balanced. The mask with an eyepiece stifles him despite the cold temperature, making him uncomfortable. His fingers are on the trigger beginning to cramp up just as he sees his target across the way. He inhales, making quick calculations in his head in order to achieve his objective. He didn’t have a spotter, he was the triggerman and the spotter rolled into one. The perfect complete weapon whom only needed regular wipes in order to maintain optimal performance.

He watches through the scope, waiting, slowing down his heartbeat and steadying his breathing. He rolls his shoulders back and adjusts his rifle. One. Two. Three. Right between the eyes. But then...

Hurried steps on wet cement. Looking back at every corner. Memorizing stranger’s faces. Eyes to rooftops. Ducking behind trash bins. Hands covering ears. Rocking back and forth. Screaming. Blood reflecting off metal. Arms covered in black, pulling. Injections at his neck. Cold plastic against hot skin. Pain. So much pain. Darkness.

And then….

White sleeves pulling him, dragging him across a dirty floor, toes scraping, bleeding. Metal against flesh, cold, sticking to his hot skin, clawing at it when he resists. Cold. So cold. Screams. Metal arm reaching out towards glass. Pleas for help, any help, muffled by ice. By Winter.

But most of all, he remembers blond hair, thin fingers running through the strands, pushing them back and away from blue eyes. Smiles, wide and honest. Brutally honest. Words exchanged, laughter hanging between, playful shoves that ended in bruises and apologies. Wheezing. Unsteady heartbeats. Strict rules and strict warnings. Doctors saying, “he may not last the winter”, over and over again only to be proven false.

Jawline, stubborn and set, eyes determined and ready. _Hey, why don’t you pick on someone your own size_? Yelling. Arguments. _Six foot something isn’t your size, Steve!_ Apologies. Touches. Intimate revelations. _I’m scared beyond all reckon, Steve, but that doesn’t mean I won’t go to hell for you_. Promises.

Bucky. James Buchanan Barnes. That’s who he was. And that’s who he wants to be again one day.

* * *

Sam used to have a routine. He likes having routines. He likes knowing where he is going to be and what he is going to do during the day. It makes his mind rest, no surprises. He’s mapped out ways around possible triggers, made allowances when things get too stressful, planned for the inevitable. Except now his life is made up of allowances, stress and inevitable headaches. Surprises everywhere.

Like this morning when he wakes up, instead of jogging his usual route, he’s making himself coffee in an underground super secret Shield facility while watching a super soldier, secretly stashed in a cell on his new Stark Pad. And instead of making his usual omelet surprise with tons of cheese and tomatoes, he grabs a bagel out of the fridge and pops it in the toaster he brought from home before setting out to make the previously mentioned super soldier his breakfast.

Now that he knows Barnes doesn't like his food to touch, Sam has taken measure to make sure the food he makes stay in their assigned indentations on the plastic trays he got off the Target website. Good thing Clint was available to pick it up at the store or else some poor mail person might have gotten killed trying to get the packaged delivered.

He makes enough food for the rest of the crew, some of which roam the facility, and portions it off. His babysitting duties end at noon today with Hill coming in to look after Barnes for a few hours while Sam goes home and actually tries to get his body to relax. It’s hard to do that when sitting on a plastic chair with no cushion watching a monitor that displays, well, a prisoner.

Barnes doesn’t do much. Except for his intervals where he looks for bugs and other things that only he can see, he mostly sits on his cot and stares. Sam thinks he might be disassociating, staring at the wall or the floor for hours before snapping to his feet and scouring the room. Sam wouldn’t blame the poor guy. He would probably be in the same situation if he’d been, you know, tortured for decades. Sam really shouldn’t have read his file. Or spoken to Steve about it. Or - anything really. Now, now he had even more fodder for nightmares. He had enough of that already, thanks.

After putting away the food, he grabs Barnes’ tray and then hesitates. Would Barnes’ drink coffee? Would he even eat the food after what Sam did last time? Granted, he hadn’t done it for any nefarious reasons. The techs really were terrified and he really had wanted to help. Sam hadn’t meant for Barnes to fall to the head first on his food and get food everywhere when the drugs took effect. Hell, he didn’t even put that much. He just wanted the techs to shut up about the request order he’d put in through Natasha and get the shit done.

And here he is, judging and condemning Fury for drugging Barnes. But hey, at least Steve knew about it, unlike a certain one-eyed scary agent.

Sam shrugs and turns back to the counter. He fixes himself another cup and then a black coffee for Barnes with some sugar packets on the side. Let’s see if he trusts me enough to eat, he thinks as he leaves the room balancing the tray and coffees.

He unlocks the door, pushing it open with the tip of his shoes and then almost spills everything. There on the metal table with his back to the door sat Director Fury. Barnes stood, rigidly, next to his cot, hands clenched into fists.

“W-what the hell?” Sam says, entering the room fully and walking to the table. He puts the tray and coffees down and asks, “How did you get inside? When did you get inside?”

“I wasn’t the director of SHIELD for nothing.”

“Yeah, well, it’s breakfast time so whatever this,” he motions between the two men, “was, it’s over. He’s gotta eat something.”

“He can eat and talk,” Fury says.

“He really can’t.”

“Then he can eat later.”

“No, he can’t,” Sam insists. “We’ve got a schedule to maintain, a routine to keep. So, this can wait until Cap gets back.”

“He’s off on a training exercise,” Fury says carefully, his eyes on Barnes. The other man makes no move, except for his metal arm making a whirring sound as the plates shift. “I don’t think he will be back for a while. Belarus is pretty far and the base is … well, not an easy target. He might not even -”

“Okay, no, no,” Sam interrupts, pointing a finger at the side of Fury’s face since the man won’t turn. “I know what you’re tryna do and I’m not gonna let you do it. Steve left me to care for him and I’m not going to abuse that trust. Unlike you.”

Fury turns to Sam and he tries very hard not to flinch. Jesus, that man is intimidating, he thinks as Fury stands. He gets a curt smile before Fury leaves, closing the door behind him.

“That was - that was too easy,” Sam says to himself turning to Barnes. “That was way too easy… don’t you think that was too easy?” Barnes doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even move or unclench his fists. Sam sighs. “Well, I’ve got some food for ya. And coffee. I figured you might want some. And I wanted to, you know, actually apologize for last time. I didn’t do anything to the food this time, I promise. I also wanted to ask if you wanted some company since Cap is gone.”

Barnes hesitates, blinking rapidly for a moment. “Where is … Rogers?”

“Fury was right. He’s on a training thing right now with the rest of the team so it’s just you and me, pal.” He doesn’t say anything after that so Sam sits down on the table, putting the tray in the center and grabbing his coffee. He takes a sip. Barnes just stands there, watching him. It would be creepy if he didn’t look so lost. His eyes were wide, terrified, like a puppy left behind by it’s family. “Sit down and eat, man. I just made your food and I would hate to see it get cold.”

Barnes moves, pulling the chair back with his metal arm and sitting on it. He stares down at the food for a long minute and then bypasses it to grab the coffee cup. Two sugars go into his coffee, then a spoon stirring the mixture held between two metal fingers. Sam watches the whole thing, fascinated. The amount of control he has over the arm is simply amazing. Stark would have a heart attack if he ever saw it. Hell, _he_ almost had a heart attack when he saw it up close for the first time.

They sip on the coffee, the food between them untouched, until Sam rolls his eyes. He has to eat his food, Sam can’t have a malnourished Barnes when Steve gets back. He doesn’t want to be on the wrong side of Steve’s ire.

“Tell ya what,” Sam says, “how about you eat everything on the tray and I’ll tell you about Steve. Whatever you wanna know that I can answer, I’ll tell ya.”

Sam really shouldn’t find the light in Barnes’ eyes cute but the way his steel blue eyes go from dead and emotionless to bright and filled with wonder is… well, cute for a master assassin. Barnes pulls the tray closer to his body and picks up the fork with his right hand, the other still wrapped around the coffee cup. He takes a bit and looks up at Sam expectantly, one eyebrow arched in a way that’s way too familiar. Did the Red Room teach their trainees how to use their eyebrows for good and bad? He should ask Natasha… on his deathbed, that way there’s less of a chance of her murdering him for knowing about the Red Room.

“What do you wanna know? I’ll tell ya only up to a point.”

“You said whatever I wanted to know,” Barnes argues, putting down the fork.

“There’s things you should ask him yourself,” Sam points out. “I’m not the guys bibliographer, I’m his friend.” Barnes seems to accept that answer, picking up the fork and eating some more. Sam notices that he only eats one thing at a time, not letting his fork touch two things at once, just like Steve said. Sam smiles into his cup, taking a careful sip.

“Who is with him, on the training mission?” Barnes asks between forkfuls of food.

“That I know of, Natasha and Clint. I think you’ve met Natasha when you first… got here. Red hair. Clint is just… Clint.”

“Can they be trusted?”

“Yeah, they can,” Sam nods. “Cap trusts them enough to let look over you so I would say he trusts them with his life.”

“He trusts too easily,” Barnes says to himself, repeating something he’d told Steve before. Sam nods but doesn't say anything, letting the conversation drop until Barnes is ready to ask. The ball is in his court, so to speak, and Sam isn’t about to push him into anything. “I don’t trust the man who left. The one with the eye patch.”

Sam scoffs. “Me either, pal. If it was up to me or the Captain you wouldn’t be anywhere near Fury.”

“Is it because I tried to kill him? I remember his face from the dossier I was assigned to.”

“No, that’s not why. Or at least not all of it. He seems to have forgiven you for that considering everything he’s done. But it doesn’t mean I trust him. Maybe I’m paranoid but, men like him, have a hundred plans running through their heads at one time. I betcha his mind reads like an intricate multi-layered spy novel complete with alternative endings and weird twists and turns.”

Barnes’ hands stop; fork halfway between his mouth and the plate, and stares at Sam. “What?”

“Nothing,” Sam says. “Ignore me. I haven’t had anyone to talk to in a while.”

“You’re watching me all the time,” Barnes says, metal thumb pointing over his shoulder to the far wall where the camera lays. “Must be boring.”

“Yeah, you are pretty boring but I make due.”

Barnes doesn’t ask anything else after that. He eats and sips his coffee silently; the scraping of the fork on the plate and his chewing are the only sounds in the room. Sam sips his own coffee, finishing it just before Barnes cleans his plate. Barnes finishes his own coffee as Sam stands up and pushes everything towards him.

“Feelin’ alright?” Sam asks as he grabs everything to pile onto the tray. “I’ve got some leftovers if you still feeling hungry.”

Barnes shakes his head. “Do you know when Steve will be back?”

“No, but I can ask him if he checks in with me.”

“Okay.”

Sam waits until Barnes gets up from the table and goes to sit on his cot in his usual rocker position, staring off just to the right of Sam’s shoulder with glazed over eyes. Sam wants to ask what he thinks about, wants to keep talking to him now that he’ll actually say more than two words to Sam. But instead he picks up the tray and heads for the door.

It isn’t until he’s halfway to the kitchen that he realizes that Barnes asked for Steve by name.

\--

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comic References Used:  
> Captain America: The First Avenger Adaptation (2013)  
> Captain America, Vol 1: Winter Soldier (2005-2009) - My favorite!

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think!


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